Attached to Place, Welcoming to Newcomers? The Twofold Effect of Place Attachment on Attitudes Towards War Refugees

We examine when and under which conditions place attachment is related to attitudes towards migrants and refugees, and whether this effect is mediated by the feeling that the presence of many newcomers threatens the character of the place (i.e. cultural continuity). We conducted three representative studies in Poland (Ntotal = 3138) to check whether two types of place attachment - traditional and active - would be differently associated with attitudes towards refugees and willingness to help them. The results showed that individuals who expressed higher traditional place attachment were more opposed towards migrants and war refugees. The relation between traditional attachment and attitudes towards refugees was mediated by a higher feeling of threat that a place would lose its cultural continuity. In contrast, actively attached residents displayed a lower level of a perceived threat to a place’s cultural continuity and were willing to accept newcomers. Our results explain the inconsistency of previous research on the relationship between place attachment and attitudes towards newcomers by indicating what type of place attachment is specifically related to negative outgroup attitudes and providing insight into a mechanism that explains this effect.