ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1658573
This article is part of the Research TopicNarrating the environment: Innovation, looks and stories on real and virtual boundariesView all 7 articles
Research on the healing concept based on systems psychology, local attachment and sustainable rural development
Provisionally accepted
- 1Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
- 2Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
- 3Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China
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Rural sustainability efforts increasingly rely on not just physical infrastructure but also psychological and social mechanisms that shape long-term behavior. This study examines how emotional restoration resources contribute to pro-environmental behavior through their influence on place attachment. Drawing on systems psychology, we propose and test a three-pathway model connecting emotional healing (ERS), place attachment systems (PAS), and rural sustainability responses (PRS). Survey data were collected from 300 residents across three regions in China, and structural equation modeling (SEM) with bootstrap analysis was used to test mediating effects. Results show that access to emotional restoration resources significantly enhances emotional attachment, which mediates the impact on sustainability-related behaviors . The model demonstrates strong overall fit , and all hypothesized paths are supported. This suggests that emotional and symbolic factors—such as access to restorative spaces, intergenerational memory, and perceived trust—are central to motivating sustainable rural actions. Our findings highlight the importance of integrating emotional infrastructures into policy design to support deeper, community-driven sustainability transitions.
Keywords: systems psychology, place attachment, Emotional Restoration Resources, Consistencyof Green Behavior, Rural sustainable development
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, LENG and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: XINCHEN LENG, orlandoxinchen@gmail.com
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