Journal of Environmental Psychology 65 (2019) 101325

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Journal of Environmental Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jep

Imagining the loss of social and physical place characteristics reduces place T
attachment
Gerhard Reesea,∗, Leonie M.S. Oettlera, Laura C. Katzb
a
University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
b
University of Würzburg, Germany

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Place attachment – the cognitive-emotional bond people have to specific places – is associated with various
Place attachment psychological outcomes and behaviors. While it is well-established that both important social as well as physical
Place identity features determine how strongly people attach to a place, it is largely unexplored how the loss of such features
Social environment causally affects place attachment. In two online experiments (N1 = 161; N2 = 199), participants were asked to
Physical environment
name physical and/or social features of their place of residence that were important to them. Subsequently, we
Urban change
asked participants to imagine the loss of these social or physical features, or the loss of both. Results revealed
that imagining the loss of both a physical and a social feature combined resulted in lowest anticipated attach-
ment to the place. Closer data inspection suggests that social features seem more important than physical fea-
tures. The experiments, introducing a novel experimental manipulation of place attachment, thus provide a
systematic, causal test of place characteristics’ influence on place attachment.

1. Introduction 2. Place attachment

What is a place? While this question may appear rather trivial, its
answer is not. In fact, a relatively long research tradition has dealt with
the question of what makes a space a place (e.g., Low & Altman, 1992;
Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001), and which features of place are important
to people (for an overview, see Scannell & Gifford, 2010). In times of
globalization, increased urbanization, and transnational mobility, the
question of which features contribute to the cognitive-emotional bond
to a place becomes even more relevant. While there is some research on
the consequences and effects of place attachment on other psycholo-
gical and behavioral variables, there are to our knowledge relatively
few experimental studies addressing the causal conditions under which
people actually attach to a place (e.g., Scannell & Gifford, 2017). In
residential settings in particular, this is a relevant question when we
seek to understand psychological processes that go along with changes
in residential milieus.
In the reported research, we test whether different types of place
features (i.e., social vs. physical) have a unique or combined effect on
place attachment. The main innovation of our studies is a causal ana-
lysis of these effects. In two experiments, we thus introduce a novel
imagination task that may alter perceptions of place.
Place attachment, the affective and cognitive bond people have to
specific places (Altman & Low, 1992; Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001), is
an important person-environment phenomenon that relates to various
psychological outcomes. It includes behavioral aspects of the bond
between people and places (Scannell & Gifford, 2010), and subsumes
place identity (i.e., a part of self-identity, built by emotions and sym-
bolic meanings about a place) and place dependence (i.e., a place's
function for activities and its functionality; Williams & Vaske, 2003).
Among others, higher place attachment predicts well-being (e.g., Billig,
Kohn, & Levav, 2006; Theodori, 2001), perceived belongingness to
one's cultural heritage (e.g., Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2004), stress re-
duction (e.g., Hartig, Kaiser, & Bowler, 2001) but also pro-environ-
mental action tendencies (e.g., Cheng & Wu, 2015; Scannell & Gifford,
2010; Vaske & Kobrin, 2001). At the same time, people high in place
attachment seek to protect the very nature of one's place (e.g., Devine-
Wright, 2013; Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010; Walker, Leviston, Price,
& Devine-Wright, 2015). Scannell and Gifford's “tripartite organizing
framework” of place attachment (2010) postulates three dimensions of
place attachment: The person or actor, the psychological process di-
mension, and the place dimension. The latter is of particular im-
portance to the current research, as it refers to the qualities of the place
itself. It can be divided into two subdimensions of physical and social

∗
Corresponding author. University of Koblenz Landau, Department of Environmental Psychology, Fortstr. 7, 76829, Landau, Germany.
E-mail address: reese@uni-landau.de (G. Reese).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101325
Received 17 August 2018; Received in revised form 17 July 2019; Accepted 17 July 2019
Available online 18 July 2019
0272-4944/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
G. Reese, et al. Journal of Environmental Psychology 65 (2019) 101325

aspects. The social component of the place dimension includes “social
ties, belongingness to the neighbourhood, and familiarity with fellow
residents and neighbourhood children […]” (Scannell & Gifford, p. 4).
The physical component, complimentary, consists of the physical
characteristics of the place and refers to the bonding to architectural
features such as houses and streets, but also natural features such as
mountains, forests, lakes and others (Manzo, 2005). In her qualitative
analysis of place attachment, Manzo identified the psychological dy-
namics related to such characteristics (e.g., positive and negative ex-
periences related to a physical place), and her findings suggest that
people even avoid places that are connected to negative experiences.
In the current set of studies, we seek to answer the question whether
people's place attachment would change if they imagined a loss of
particular social or physical features. We believe that this question
becomes more and more relevant, given the speed of how surroundings
can change through infrastructure development, biodiversity loss or
declining population, and thereby declining social bonds, within com-
munities. How do such changes affect place attachment? In an experi-
mental design, Scannell & Gifford, (2017) manipulated place attach-
ment by asking participants to imagine a place that was familiar to
them. Those in the place attachment condition were asked to visualize a
place they were especially attached to; those in the neutral place con-
dition were asked to think of a familiar place they did not have a strong
attachment to. As expected, participants who visualized a place of at-
tachment indicated stronger place attachment. Stronger place attach-
ment, then increased positive affect and psychological need satisfac-
tion. Based on these findings, is it possible that imagining the loss of
important place characteristics – rather than imagining its familiarity –
may affect place attachment? If so, it is plausible to assume that ima-
gining a loss of place characteristics may decrease place attachment. We
seek to test this assumption using a novel experimental manipulation.
2.1. The present research
Given that social and physical features of a place relate to the extent
of place attachment (for an overview, see Scannell & Gifford, 2010;
Riger & Lavrakas, 1981; Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2004), we argue that
place attachment should be reduced once people imagine a loss of place
defining features. This research seeks to provide experimental evidence
for this prediction. We conducted two experiments manipulating whe-
ther people imagined a social loss, a physical loss, both, or no loss at all.
Specifically, we assumed that both the loss of a social as well as a
physical feature would reduce participants’ anticipated place attach-
ment. However, there is reason to assume that the loss of social features
would be a stronger predictor of place attachment reduction. For ex-
ample, previous research suggests that attachment to a place is sy-
nonymous to attachment to the people of that place and the social
networks in this place, with physical features primarily serving as cat-
alysts for these social processes (e.g., Greif, 2009; Woldoff, 2002; Sharp,
2018).
3. Study 1
3.1. Method
Design and participant recruitment. The experiment was realized
using the online survey tool SocSci survey (Leiner, 2014). The experi-
mental software randomly assigned participants to one of the four
conditions of the experiment's 2 (Social feature: Loss imagined vs. no
loss imagined) x 2 (Physical feature: Loss imagined vs. no loss ima-
gined) between subjects design. An a priori power analysis using the
program G*Power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) calculated
an N of 171 participants to detect a medium effect size of f=.25 (Cohen,
2013) and a power of 1-β=.90.
Therefore, 178 participants from a town in Southwest Germany
were approached. They were recruited through the distribution of
flyers, via email, and on campus of the local university. Only persons
older than 18, having spent at least a year in town, were addressed
during recruitment. Of the 178 participants participating in the online
experiment, 17 persons had to be omitted because they had either
finished the questionnaire conspicuously fast (namely 1.7 times faster
than the median time for completion [Leiner, 2013], 8 participants),
did not name a feature of the town (n = 2), named nonsense features
(n = 6), or indicated having spent less than a year in the town (n = 1).
Of the 161 remaining participants, 66% self-identified as female. They
were M = 29 years old (SD = 11.98). Most of the participants were
students (67%), followed by 21% employees and 4% self-employed
persons. Others were either retired, searching for a job, going to school,
or other. The average length of residency in the town was 8.46 years
(SD = 12.46). For the calculation of the latter value, one person was
excluded because of a nonsensical answer given on this item (i.e.,
200.999 years – fun, but useless).
Material and procedure. The experiment was introduced as a
study on “What makes [town] a [town]?” and consisted of three parts.
First, participants read definitions of physical and social features of a
place. In a text field below, they were asked to write down one sub-
jectively meaningful social and physical feature of [town]. Second, the
manipulation was implemented. Adopting the manipulation introduced
above (Scannell & Gifford, 2017), participants were asked to imagine
and vividly visualize [town] now without the social feature, without the
physical feature, or without both. Participants in the control group were
not asked to imagine any loss. To make sure that participants took some
time to create this image in their minds, the minimal duration on this
questionnaire page was set to 20 s. Typical responses to the physical
feature instruction were the “market place”, “19th century buildings”,
“pedestrian precinct” or “the horseman” (a statue in town centre). Ty-
pical responses to the social feature instruction were “friends”, “con-
viviality in town”, or “social networks”. Table 1 summarizes the types
of responses and shows which physical and social features are most
salient. Responses were summarized into five categories for physical
features, and four categories for social features.

Table 1
Categories and frequencies of responses named by participants for physical and social features of place.
Features Categories Examples Frequency Study 1 Frequency Study 2

Physical
Architecture & infrastructure Buildings, market places, paths, proximity 82 140
Urban nature & parks Parks, greenery, rivers 18 30
Geography & climate Region, wine are, forests 55 129
Adjectives Dynamic, well-defined, organized 26 20
Else 6 14
Social
Community Festivities, social networks 60 132
Friends & family Friends, family, partner 55 146
Mentality Open-minded, friendly, welcoming 65 43
Else 6 17

Note. Frequencies may differ as table also includes data of participants who did not complete the whole survey.

2
G. Reese, et al.
Participants in the control group were directly prompted to the
place attachment measure after naming social and physical place fea-
tures. Finally, participants were instructed to indicate the strength of
their place attachment with [town] when the respective features were
lacking. Place attachment was measured with an adapted 12-item scale
based on the work by Williams and Vaske (2003), with six items
measuring the sub-dimension place identity (e.g. I would feel [town] was
a part of me. α = .91) and place dependence (e.g. [Town] would be the
best place for what I like to do. α = .74). Participants could respond on 5-
point Likert scales from “1 - strongly disagree” to “5 - strongly agree”.
For overall place attachment, the mean of both subscales was com-
puted. In the control group (where items were not formulated in sub-
junctive), reliabilities were α = .93 for the place identity subscale and
α = .81 for the place dependence subscale. Finally, socio-demographic
variables were collected (i.e. gender, age, educational level, current
employment, length of residence, length of planned future residence
time).
3.2. Results & discussion
A 2x2 ANOVA with place attachment as the dependent variable and
imagined vs. non-imagined loss of a social vs. physical feature revealed
a significant main effect of the social feature loss on place attachment, F
(1, 157) = 39.78, p < .001, η2p = .20, 95%CIdiff [0.53, 1.01], sug-
gesting that participants who imagined the loss of a social feature
(M = 2.11, SD = 0.71) indicated lower place attachment than those
who did not (M = 2.92, SD = 0.90). Similarly, there was a significant
main effect of the physical feature on place attachment, F(1,
157) = 12.28, p < .001, η2p = .07, 95%CIdiff [0.19, 0.67], suggesting
that participants who imagined the loss of a physical feature (M = 2.28,
SD = 0.75) indicated lower place attachment than those who did not
(M = 2.78, SD = 0.98). Most importantly, however, these main effects
were qualified by an interaction, F(1, 157) = 5.79, p = .02, η2p = .04.
As can be seen in Fig. 1, actual place attachment was highest (i.e.,
the control condition. M = 3.24, SD = 0.93). Anticipated place at-
tachment was significantly lower (both p < .05) for physical loss
(when there was no social loss, M = 2.52, SD = 0.68, 95%CIdiff [0.39,
1.06]) and social loss (when there was no physical loss, M = 2.18,
SD = 0.65, 95%CIdiff [0.73, 1.40]). Importantly, when people imagined
social loss, there was no significant difference (p = .45) in anticipated
place attachment, regardless of whether participants imagined
(M = 2.04, SD = 0.75) a physical loss in addition or not (M = 2.18,
SD = 0.65), 95%CIdiff [-0.22, 0.48].
To control for the stability of the effect, we repeated the analysis
including the covariates length of residence and age. Length of re-
sidence had a significant effect on place attachment, F(1,148) = 5.7,
p = .02, η2p = .02, while age did not, F < 1. Both the pattern of results
as well as the main and interaction effects did not change. The main
effect of the social feature loss on place attachment, F(1, 148) = 40.17,
p < .001, η2p = .21, main effect of the physical feature on place at-
tachment, F(1, 148) = 11.53, p < .001, η2p = .07, as well as the
Fig. 1. Place attachment as a function of imagined social and physical loss in
Study 1.
3
Journal of Environmental Psychology 65 (2019) 101325
interaction, F(1, 148) = 5.61, p = .02, η2p = .04, remained significant.
This study is the first to report a new experimental manipulation of
place attachment. Place attachment was reduced when people imagined
a loss of a physical or a social feature or both. It is noteworthy that both
physical and social loss uniquely resulted in place attachment reduc-
tions. Yet, in line with our expectation, social loss seems to be more
important for changes in place attachment, as shown by a stronger
drop. In the second experiment, we sought to replicate this finding,
addressing some methodological problems of the first study.
4. Study 2
While Experiment 1 provides first evidence that imagining the loss
of place features may reduce place attachment, some methodological
issues remain. First of all, Experiment 1 was conducted in one solitary
town in southwest Germany. In order to generalize the findings in a
replication, we collected data from various places across Germany, re-
sulting in a geographically more diverse sample. Second, it is possible
that the reduction of place attachment was strongest in the combined
condition because participants had to imagine the loss of two features
(one physical, one social) rather than one social or one physical.
Therefore, we asked participants to imagine the loss of two social or
two physical features in Experiment 2. Finally, the place attachment
scale in Experiment 1 did lack of a subscale that addresses affective
attachment. This is now included in Experiment 2.
5. Method
Design and participant recruitment. Replicating Experiment 1,
we again applied a 2 (Social: Loss vs. no loss) x 2 (Physical: Loss vs. no
loss) between subjects design, using the same survey tool. The final
sample consisted of N = 199 participants,1 stemming from more than
30 different places across Germany, determined by the postal code
participants entered. Sample size was selected based on an a priori
power analysis by using G*Power (Faul et al., 2007) in order to detect a
medium effect size (f = .25; Cohen, 2013) with 90% test power and two
covariates. The estimated sample size was N = 171. However, we
decided to collect a larger sample in case of potential dropout, and to
have a well-powered replication and extension of Study 1. Recruitment
was realized via psychology research mailing lists of 13 German uni-
versities, social network sites, snowball technique, and personal inter-
rogation in a local city center in February and March 2019. Participants
could take part in a raffle in which they could win one of five 50 € cash
prizes.
Of the 199 participants participating in the online experiment, 8
persons had to be omitted because they finished the questionnaire
conspicuously fast (namely 1.7 times faster than the median time for
completion [Leiner, 2013]). Participants were M = 25.6 years old
(SD = 6.85) while 46 participants solely confirmed being of age but did
not report their exact ages. One-hundred and thirty-nine individuals
were female (73%), 57 male (25.0%) and in three cases, gender was not
reported (2%). Participants had diverse educational backgrounds: 109
participants with university or applied university entrance qualifica-
tion, followed by 53 graduate students, 23 participants with a master's
degree, 9 with professional training, and the remaining participants
having diverse educational backgrounds. As current main occupation,
145 participants indicated being a student and 35 indicated to be em-
ployed. The average length of residency in their place was 8.63 years
1
We originally aimed to collect more data and reached a final sample of 339
participants. However, a technical error with the software resulted in random,
incomplete datasets and unequal cell distributions from participant 200 on-
wards. For the sake of clarity, precision, and data reliability, we decided to only
include those 199 participants that were collected before the technical error
occurred.
G. Reese, et al. Journal of Environmental Psychology 65 (2019) 101325

(SD = 9.68).
Material and procedure. The online questionnaire was pro-
grammed with the software package SoSci Survey (www.soscisurvey.
de), version 2.6.00-i (Leiner, 2014). Named “Here today, there to-
morrow”, the questionnaire was divided into three parts, parallel to the
first study. After being informed about and actively agreeing with the
data protection conditions (including participating voluntarily), parti-
cipants needed to confirm that they fulfilled the precondition, namely
living at their place of residence for at least one year. Participants then
followed the same procedure as in Study 1, except for that participants
were asked to write down (and in the subsequent step envision the loss
of) either two physical, two social or one physical and one social in- Fig. 2. Place attachment as a function of imagined social and physical loss in
dividually meaningful feature of their place of residence. We used the Study 2.
same measure of place attachment as in Study 1 and additionally, we
implemented a two-item subscale for affective attachment deriving
p < .001, η2p = .34, the main effect of the physical feature on place
from place attachment research (e.g. “I feel happy in this [place].“;
attachment, F(1, 145) = 39.343, p < .001, η2p = .21, as well as the
Brocato, 2006). Again, Participants could respond on 5-point Likert
interaction, F(1, 145) = 16.61, p < .001, η2p = .10, remained sig-
scales from ‘1 - strongly disagree’ to 5 - strongly agree’, except for the
nificant.
affective attachment items that were measured from ‘1 - strongly dis-
Study 2 – well-powered and resolving some methodological issues
agree’ to ‘7 - strongly agree’. Total place attachment was calculated as
from Study 1 – replicates the effect that imagining social or physical
mean of the three subscales.2 Overall, reliabilities for place identity
loss of place features reduces place attachment. Again, the loss of social
(αsubjunctive = .74, αcontrolgroup = .91), place dependence
features appears to have a stronger impact on place attachment than
(αsubjunctive = .60, αcontrolgroup = .84), and affective attachment
physical loss, supporting the notion that it is the “social glue” that
(αsubjunctive = .89, αcontrolgroup = .86) were satisfactory. Finally, socio-
bonds us to a place.
demographic variables were collected (i.e. gender, age, educational
level, current employment, postcode, length of residence, and length of
planned future residence time). At the end of the questionnaire, parti- 6. General discussion
cipants were debriefed, and were given the opportunity to leave their
email address to receive research results. The current experiments, to our knowledge, are the first to experi-
mentally manipulate people's place attachment through imagining the
loss of an important social or physical feature of their place. When
5.1. Results & discussion
participants were asked to imagine the loss of a social or physical fea-
ture, their place attachment would substantially reduce. Most im-
A 2x2 ANOVA with place attachment as dependent variable re-
portantly, both studies suggest that it is the social fundament of a place
vealed a significant main effect of the social features loss on place at-
– friends, relatives, social networks, common experiences and such –
tachment, F(1, 194) = 101.92, p < .001, η2p = .34, 95%CIdiff [0.94,
that is more important to peoples' sense of place. To our knowledge, this
1.39], reinforcing that participants who imagined the loss of social
is the first set of studies providing experimental evidence for this as-
features (M = 2.03, SD = 0.73) indicated lower place attachment than
sumption.
those who did not (M = 3.25, SD = 1.08). Additionally, a significant
The current experiments contribute to the idea that place attach-
main effect of the physical features’ loss could be found, F(1,
ment is flexible (see for example Brown & Perkins, 1992; Burley,
194) = 39.02, p < .001, η2p = .17, 95%CIdiff [0.49, 0.95], underlining
Jenkins, Laska, & Davis, 2007; Chamlee-Wright & Storr, 2009; Scannell
our findings from study one: participants who imagined the loss of
& Gifford, 2017), and that imagination of the loss of place character-
physical features (M = 2.24, SD = 0.83) seem to indicate lower place
istics can decrease place attachment. Thus, in times of enormous in-
attachment than those who did not (M = 3.02, SD = 1.2). Again, these
frastructural development (be it in terms of erecting wind energy
main effects were qualified by an interaction, F(1, 194) = 22.37,
plants, removing old houses, or replacing nature by buildings or streets,
p < .001, η2p = .10.
and thereby, reducing places where people can meet and bond), it is
As can be seen in Fig. 2, actual place attachment was highest (i.e.,
plausible that place attachment becomes more dynamic, with the cor-
the control condition; M = 3.83, SD = 0.87). Anticipated place at-
responding consequences that people may become less prone to “pro-
tachment was significantly lower (both p < .05) for physical loss
tect” their place once it has begun to change. This resonates nicely with
(when there was no social loss, M = 2.57, SD = 0.90, 95%CIdiff [0.94,
a recent study suggesting that taking local history classes in schools
1.59]) and social loss (when there was no physical loss, M = 2.12,
may help increasing pupils' place attachment (Stefaniak, Bilewicz, &
SD = 0.81, 95%CIdiff [1.39, 2.03]). Importantly, when people imagined
Lewicka, 2017). Second, our findings suggest that the social features of
social loss, there was no significant difference (p = .28) in anticipated
a place may be more important than the physical features (Hidalgo &
place attachment, regardless of whether participants imagined
Hernandez, 2001; Riger & Lavrakas, 1981; Waxman, 2006). Apparently,
(M = 1.95, SD = 0.65) a physical loss in addition or not (M = 2.12,
people connect their social experiences and their bonds to other people
SD = 0.81), 95%CIdiff [-0.15, 0.50].
and the experience with them strongly to a place. While physical fea-
To control for the stability of the effect, we repeated the analysis
tures alone are also important, it seems to be the “social glue” that
including the covariates length of residence and age. Neither length of
keeps peoples’ place together.
residence, F(1,145) = 2.94, p = .09, η2p = .02, nor age, F < 1, had a
An interesting yet theoretically unexplored link we see here refers to
significant effect on place attachment. Both the pattern of results as well
individuals' social identity – the part of one's identity derived from
as the main and interaction effects did not change. The main effect of
group memberships (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). To our knowledge, there is
the social feature loss on place attachment, F(1, 145) = 73.02,
only very little research bringing together place attachment and social
identity theorizing (e.g., Renger & Reese, 2017; Walker, Leviston, Price,
2
In the supplemental material, we present analyses of the effects of our & Devine‐Wright, 2015). Yet, this may become more important than
manipulation on the different subscales of place attachment. The pattern of the ever given the breadth and depth of social and societal changes that
subscales is very similar to the overall pattern of the aggregated scale. may go along with climate change and other environmental crises (see

4
G. Reese, et al.
also Fritsche, Barth, Jugert, Masson, & Reese, 2018). The current ex-
periments provide at least some initial indication that individuals'
confrontation with (undesirable) changes of the social aspects of their
place reduces the attachment – and eventually, commitment – for the
place. This opens up exciting avenues for future research addressing
this social identity – place attachment nexus, so that the current ex-
periments contribute to the theoretical development of the dynamics of
place bonds. As mentioned above, only few studies bring together social
identity and place attachment. With the current findings, it becomes
evident that these concepts may fit together nicely. At least in contexts
in which strong social ties define our attachment to a place (e.g., in
cities, neighborhoods or villages), it is likely that identification with
these communities may foster or hinder consequences of place attach-
ment. Future research should thus attempt to measure and manipulate
social identification (e.g., attachment to a group) orthogonally to at-
tachment (e.g., attachment to physical and social features). We believe
that one difficulty lies in whether “social place attachment” and “social
identity” can be empirically distinguished. Looking at changes of these
bonds may represent one fruitful path to do so (e.g., by imagining the
loss of a social feature but not the loss of a social group and vice versa).
The current studies have some weaknesses that should also be taken
into account. Most importantly, due to the nature of the design, we had
to compare actual place attachment (i.e., in the control condition) with
anticipated place attachment (i.e., how attached would you feel
without the feature). Yet, we think this potential shortcoming is rather
informative as it allows to test the dynamics of place change in a cross-
sectional study rather than in a longitudinal field study. Second, we
believe that future studies should extend the current experiments by
including additional measures, such as action addressed at protecting
the place, or pro-environmental behavior on a local scale. Finally, there
may be characteristics of the place itself that may affect whether social
or physical loss is more important. For example, in places primarily
characterized by natural beauty, a loss of social characteristics may
have a lower impact than in urban areas that are defined by social life.
These issues notwithstanding, we believe that this paper makes a sig-
nificant contribution to the research on place attachment, showing its
flexibility as a function of social and physical features and through
introducing a useful experimental manipulation of place attachment.
Author note
Gerhard Reese, Department of Social, Environmental and Economic
Psychology, University of Koblenz Landau, Germany. Leonie M. S.
Oettler, University of Koblenz Landau, Germany. Laura C. Katz,
Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Germany.
Appendix. Instruction to the imagination task (English
translation)
Please read the following text carefully. Further questions will
relate to that.
Many people can call certain properties in their place of residence
that makes this place meaningful for them.
There are physical local characteristics and social local character-
istics that play a role.
The term physical local characteristics refers to those that are
sensually experienced, for example the cityscape, the image of nature,
certain buildings, the weather etc.
The term social local characteristics refer to those that make up the
living together with the people on the spot. This could be, for example,
the circle of friends and family, the mentality of humans or the culture.
When you think of [your place of residence] what physical char-
acteristic comes to your mind that is of particular importance to you?
Please enter this in the following input field.
Note: Please enter only one characteristic! (Study 2: Two char-
acteristics).
5
Journal of Environmental Psychology 65 (2019) 101325
When you think of [TOWN], what social characteristic/s come to
your mind that is/are of particular importance for you?
Please enter this in the following input field.
Note: Please enter only one characteristic! (Study 2: Two char-
acteristics).
Now imagine that the physical characteristic of [TOWN] (vine-
yards) mentioned by you, as well as the social characteristic of
[TOWN] (warmth) you mentioned no longer exist. (Study 2: imagine
that the two physical characteristics … vs. imagine that the two social
characteristics …)
Please stop for an instant and imagine again, how the changed
[TOWN] would be without the physical (vineyards) and social char-
acteristics (warmth) you mentioned. (Study 2: … without the two
physical [c1,c2] vs without the two social [c1,c2] you mentioned).
How would it feel, what would you notice, what would change
in your everyday life?
In the text field, you have the opportunity to write down your
thoughts.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101325.
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