The measurement of place attachment: Personal,

community, and environmental connections

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The construct of place attachment has received considerable attention in the

environmental psychology and environmental management literatures over the past
two decades. However, it has been challenging for researchers to assimilate the
different place attachment concepts in these literatures and to understand its jargon
(see Patterson & Williams, 2005; Scannell and Gifford, 2010a, Trentelman, 2009 for
reviews). Trentelman (2009) provides an eloquent review of the different strands of
place scholarship, and highlights the tensions between the disciplines interested in: 1)
the socio-cultural dimensions of place, such as community attachment; 2) the
biophysical dimensions of place, with emphasis on the “setting or container”, and; 3)
the integration of both socio-cultural and natural setting dynamics within place
attachment research.

Researchers interested in the biophysical dimension of place have placed considerable

emphasis on a two-dimensional model of place attachment comprising of place
identity and place dependence (see Williams, Patterson, Roggenbuck, & Watson, 1992).
Place identity refers to those dimensions of self, such as the mixture of feelings about
specific physical settings and symbolic connections to place that define who we are
(Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1983). Place dependence refers to the functional or
goal-directed connections to a setting; for example, it reflects the degree to which the
physical setting provides conditions to support an intended use (Schreyer, Jacob, &
White, 1981). The validity and reliability of this two-dimensional model is supported by
several studies in the United States (e.g., Bricker and Kerstetter, 2000, Jorgensen and
Stedman, 2006, Kyle et al., 2005, Williams and Vaske, 2003) and Australia (e.g., Brown
and Raymond, 2007, Pretty et al., 2003).

However, this two-dimensional model overlooks important connections to the natural

and social environment which we propose are related constructs to the highly
personalized attachments associated with place identity and place dependence.
Gustafson (2001) provides a three-pole self-other-environment theoretical framework
to highlight these differences. The “self” pole suggests some places are associated
with highly personal meanings related to life path, emotion, activity, and self-
identification. The “other” pole suggests characteristics of the inhabitants influence
place attachment. The “environment” pole, on the other hand, reflects the role of the
physical environment in developing place attachment. Recent empirical studies offer
some support for this view. Techniques have been developed for measuring the extent
of individual’s connections to nature (the physical environment as it exists without
human beings), defined in terms of the extent of one’s identity with nature (Clayton,
2003), affinity to nature (Kals et al., 1999, Perkins, in press) or connectedness to nature
(Schultz, 2001, Schultz et al., 2004, Schultz and Tabanico, 2007). Researchers
interested in social attachments have found that the social and geographic context of
place bonds requires greater consideration in place attachment research and have
proposed constructs such as belongingness, and neighborhood attachment (Brown
et al., 2003, Hay, 1998a, Hidalgo and Hernandez, 2001, Kyle and Chick, 2007).

Recent studies have developed psychometric scales for measuring individuals’

attachments to place based upon their interactions with both the community and the
natural environment. Brehm, Eisenhauer, and Krannich (2006) examined the
connection between two dimensions of community attachment named social and
natural environment. Social attachment and natural environment were distinct and
separate dimensions of place attachment and they had significant associations with
environmental concern. Scannell and Gifford (2010b) developed and tested a place
attachment scale comprising of natural and civic attachment dimensions. The physical
aspects were represented by natural environment attachment and the social aspects
were represented by civic attachment. Whilst both approaches clearly articulate the
physical and social dimensions of place attachment, they overlook how the physical
and social dimensions of place interact with the highly personalized attachments
related to place identity and place dependence (see Williams et al., 1992, Williams and
Vaske, 2003). Researchers are now calling for new integrated models which consider
the interactions between place as a natural and social setting and how the setting
supports one’s self-identity or functional goals (Davenport et al., 2010, Sampson and
Goodrich, 2009). Linking nature-based and social attachments with more traditional
measures of place attachment, such as place identity and place dependence, may
begin to address this need.

In this study, we conceptualize and empirically examine a four-dimensional model of

place attachment among three samples of rural landholders in regional South Australia
for use in natural or rural land-use contexts. The model includes place identity and
place dependence (personal connections to place), nature bonding (connections to the
natural environment), and social bonding (connections to the community in place). The
validity and reliability of the item-scales were examined among rural landholders who
live in the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges region of South Australia using principal
component and reliability analyses. The scale was refined and then included in a
survey mailed to 1300 landholders in each of the Northern and Yorke and South
Australian Murray-Darling Basin (SAMDB) regions of South Australia. The construct
validity and convergent validity of the refined scale was then tested across all Northern
and Yorke landholders. Finally, we tested the goodness-of-fit of our conceptual model
of place attachment against the SAMDB place attachment data. First, the theoretical
basis for a three-pole conceptualization of place attachment is expounded. Each of the
proposed place attachment dimensions are defined and discussed.

Place researchers have paid significant attention to the strength of individual or

personal attachments to place. Most researchers have operationalised these personal
place attachments using constructs of place identity and place dependence (Bricker
and Kerstetter, 2000, Kyle et al., 2003, Moore and Graefe, 1994, Williams et al., 1992).
Although place identity and place dependence are highly correlated, different
relationships have been found between these constructs and dependent variables such
as recreation skill level (Bricker & Kerstetter, 2000), experience use history (Hammitt
et al., 2004, Hammitt et al., 2009), landscape values (Brown & Raymond, 2007) and
visitors’ spending preferences (Kyle et al., 2004a, Kyle et al., 2004b, Kyle et al., 2003).
Researchers have also examined the relationships between this two-dimensional
model of place attachment and pro-environmental behavior, with significant positive
relationships found between place identity and willingness to engage in pro-
environmental behaviors (Stedman, 2002, Vaske and Kobrin, 2001) and place-
protective actions (Devine-Wright & Howes, in press).

A second area of place scholarship highlights the importance of the role of the
community in forming place attachments. This social context has been operationalised
in a variety of ways, including community attachment, belongingness, rootedness, and
familiarity. The term ‘community’ is based on a systemic model of connection between
residents and their communities (Kasarda & Janowitz, 1974). This systemic model
posits that community attachment is strongly related to individual connections to local
social networks (bonds) and the interactions which occur with them. Kasarda and
Janowitz (1974) compared community attachments based on a linear model of
population size and density vs. the systemic model of social connection. They found
that the social connectedness that developed between people over the course of their
residence in a given place was a more powerful predictor of community attachment
than population size or density of the community population. More recent studies build
upon the systemic model in different settings. Perkins and Long (2002) referred to
these social connections in place as social bonding or the feelings of belongingness or
membership to a group of people, as well as the emotional connections based on
shared history, interests or concerns.

Researchers interested in the socio-cultural dimension of place argue that the two-
dimensional model of place attachment is inadequate in addressing place attachment
and highlight the need to consider the social context of place bonds, including the
social interaction through which place meanings are mediated (Hay, 1998a, Hidalgo
and Hernandez, 2001, Kyle and Chick, 2007, Sampson and Goodrich, 2009). Hay
(1998b) found that ancestral and cultural connections are important to the
development of a rooted attachment to place. Fishwick and Vining (1992, p. 57)
studied the experiences of college students in Illinois state parks and found that
students’ connections to these sites were an assortment of “setting, landscape, ritual,
routine, people, [and] personal experiences”. Hidalgo and Hernandez (2001) observed
that social attachments were stronger than setting attachments within houses,
neighborhoods, and cities. Kyle, Bricker, Graefe, and Wickham (2004) examined the
relationships between involvement and place attachment for hikers along the
Appalachian Trail. As recreationists’ social ties to the setting grew so too did their
emotional attachment (in terms of place identity) to the setting. Kyle and Chick (2007)
highlighted the importance assigned to place experiences shared with family and close
friends on the development of place meanings within agricultural fairs.

Social attachments to places have been explained using a variety of constructs that in
some instances have overlapping meanings. These constructs include: place
belongingness where people feel a ‘membership’ to an environment (Mesch and Manor,
1998, Milligan, 1998), place rootedness which refers to a very strong bond to home
(Hay, 1998b, Tuan, 1980), place familiarity defined as pleasant memories, achievement
memories, and environmental images associated with places (Roberts, 1996),
and neighborhood attachment which captures one’s emotional connection to his or her
immediate surroundings (Brown et al., 2003). Hammitt and colleagues (Hammitt,
Backlund, & Bixler, 2006) considered belongingness, rootedness, and familiarity (as
well as place identity and place dependence) in their design of a new place attachment
scale. Exploratory and reliability analyses indicated that these constructs were three
separate and reliable dimensions of recreational place bonding. However, there were
strong correlations between place identity and place belongingness, and place identity
explained most of the variance in place attachment. Other researchers have integrated
these three concepts under the term of social bonding. Kyle et al. (2005) developed a
scale for measuring social bonding in terms of the social relationships which occur
and are maintained in recreational settings along an Appalachian Trail. Whilst their
social bonding scale had low validity and reliability (i.e. low factor loadings and t-
values, low internal consistency), it explicitly addressed the role of community as the
intermediary between individuals and the natural environment, as proposed by
Gustafson (2001) and reinforced by Sampson and Goodrich (2009). Kyle and
colleagues also encourage the consideration of additional items of social bonding to
improve the validity and reliability of this construct. Such refinement is one focus of
this paper.

Another area of place scholarship highlights the importance of connections to the

natural environment without human beings, which we refer to as nature bonding.
Nature bonding has been operationalised in a variety of ways, including environmental
identity, emotional affinity towards nature, and connectedness to nature. Environmental
identity theory (Clayton, 2003), which has its origin in “deep ecology”, describes
people’s experiences with nature as integral to one’s sense of self (Bragg, 1996, Fox,
1990, Nash, 1990, Zimmerman et al., 1993). This theory also relates to the biophilia
hypothesis (Kellert and Wilson, 1993, Wilson, 1984) which claims that human’s
connection to nature and well-being is strongly influenced by their relationships with
the surrounding natural world. Research on environmental identity, otherwise
termed emotional affinity towards nature (Kals et al., 1999, Perkins, in press) focuses on
individual emotional connections to nature, such as a ‘love of nature’. Unlike the
definition of place identity presented in the leisure and recreational sciences, it has a
much greater emphasis on the connections between the individual and the natural
world. Kals and colleagues showed that emotional affinity can be distinguished from
its cognitive equivalent of ‘interest in nature’ and that emotional affinity is a powerful
predictor of nature-protective behavior. More recently, researchers have developed a 7-
point connectedness to nature scale (Dutcher et al., 2007, Mayer and Frantz, 2004)
with high validity and reliability. Gosling and Williams (in press) used this scale to
examine the relationships between place attachment and connectedness to nature.
Significant, but weak correlations were identified between these three constructs
(r = .25, p < .01). They also found significant, but weak correlations between the desire
to protect remnant vegetation and affinity to nature (r = .27, p < .01).

A separate line of work has focused on the cognitive dimensions of environmental

identity. Dutcher (2000) and Schultz (2001) used a modified version of the Inclusion of
Other in Self scale (IOS) which was developed by Aron and colleagues (Aron et al.,
1992, Aron et al., 1991) to measure the extent to which an individual includes nature
within his or her cognitive representation of self, in what is otherwise referred to as
a connectedness to nature scale. Schultz and colleagues suggest that individuals hold
implicit cognitive associations between themselves and the natural environment which
influence their environmental concerns (Schultz et al., 2004, Schultz and Tabanico,
2007).

The recreational literature has also examined how the characteristics of the natural
environment influence place attachment. A number of studies have examined
relationships among place attachment, human use or experience of the leisure activity
and the characteristics of the natural environment. Hammitt et al., 2004, Hammitt et al.,
2009 found a negative relationship between place dependence and experience use
history. The authors suggest that the availability of substitute natural settings
moderate the degree of place dependence for any specific place. Kyle and colleagues
examined the relationships among place attachment, leisure activity involvement, and
the characteristics of specific natural environments. In a study of hikers, boaters and
anglers, the strength of place attachment was related to specific motivations to be
involved in leisure activities and the type of natural setting in which this activity was
undertaken (Kyle et al., 2004). When examining the relationships among place
attachment, activity involvement, and setting density, place identity and place
dependence were significant predictors of setting density, but to different degrees
(Kyle et al., 2004a). Respondents scoring high on the place identity dimension were
more inclined to feel crowded in the setting than those respondents with high place
dependence. Similarly, respondents scoring high on the place identity dimension were
more likely to negatively appraise user impact on the natural environment (Kyle, Graefe,
Manning, & Bacon, 2004b).

A separate recreation and leisure literature has emphasized the role of both
communities and physical settings in the formation of place attachment. Stedman
(2003, p. 673) encourages an “empirical investigation between aspects of the natural
environment, and its meanings.” For example, he and colleagues explored the place
meanings and attachments of visitors to Jasper National Park, Alberta, using
photography. They observed that the meanings visitors associated with the park were
driven by complex interactions between ecological and socio-cultural factors
(Stedman, Beckley, Wallace, & Ambard, 2004). Sampson and Goodrich (2009) support
Stedman’s (2003) view that there are interactions between communities and the
natural, physical setting. Communities have particular characteristics which bind them
to specific locales, but they are also bounded by particularities of the natural
environment. They also argue that communities provide the filter through which
individuals can develop identity with place. Coasters from the West Coast of the South
Island, New Zealand, shared strong anti-government sentiments about the loss of
forestry from their region which reinforced notions of identity and distinctiveness of
place; however, they also described the capacity of the natural environment (e.g.,
amount of rainfall) to influence the practices of people. Their study builds upon the
concepts of place distinctiveness and continuity (Twigger-Ross & Uzzell, 1996).
Distinctiveness theory suggests that individuals develop strong identity with place
because it facilitates “distinctiveness” from other place or affirms the uniqueness of
the group. Continuity theory suggests that the physical environment is conceptualized
by individuals as a reference for past action and experience. Past action and
experience in place plays an important role in maintaining individual and group identity.

We acknowledge that place attachment researchers have considered connections to

the physical environment beyond natural settings. Manzo’s (2003) review of the place
attachment literature indicates that individual connections to places are dynamic and
encompass a broad range of physical settings, such as residential, recreational, and
leisure settings. Kaltenborn (1997) investigated the place meanings of recreational
homes. He defined two dimensions of place attachment: nature-culture which relates
to the place as both a natural environment and a cultural landscape and family-social
concerning family life at the recreational home. Gustafson (2001) asked participants to
identify attachments to their community/village, city, and country. Buildings and nature
were coded under “physical environment.” Low (2000) showed the importance of town
plazas for Costa-Ricans. Manzo (2005) identified the place experiences of residents of
New York City. Individuals were attached to different types and scales of physical
settings. Some attachments related to beaches, parks, and lakes; others were
churches, bars, Laundromats, and airports. Rollero and De Piccoli’s (2010) found that
participants with high place attachment described the city in a positive way, such as
beautiful and welcoming, whereas participants with low place attachment described
the city negatively, such as the presence of pollution. Whilst these studies show the
importance of place attachment to built environments, they do not provide scales for
measuring the intensity of these attachments across multiple place contexts, including
personal, community and natural environment contexts.

The preceding literature review highlights that there are multiple, overlapping meanings
of place attachment and its operational measures that have developed in different
disciplines, such as social psychology, environmental psychology, and community
sociology. This section provides a model of place attachment that attempts to
integrate conceptually and empirically the many ways which place attachment has
been examined (Fig. 1). Researchers interested in the biophysical dimension of place
have either focused on: 1) the personal context of place attachment, specifically
examining the highly individualized attachments of place identity and place
dependence (Table 1), or; 2) the natural environment context, examining the related
constructs of environmental identity, emotional affinity, and connectedness to nature,
which we propose can be considered using the overarching construct of nature
bonding (Fig. 1) defined in Table 1. Nature bonding may not be applicable for the
measurement of place attachment in urban settings, but it is relevant to natural and
rural land-use contexts, which is the focus of this paper. Researchers in the socio-
cultural dimension of place have largely focused on the community context of place
attachment which has been examined using the constructs of neighborhood
attachment, belongingness, and familiarity. We propose these constructs form part of
a larger construct of social bonding (Fig. 1, Table 1).

Similarities and differences exist between the four hypothesized dimensions of place
attachment presented in Fig. 1. Both place identity and nature bonding include
emotional connections about physical settings. Following continuity theory, place
identity is strongly related to residential history (see Hay, 1998a, Twigger-Ross and
Uzzell, 1996); however, we argue that nature bonding is unrelated to residential history
within a given place. Rather, it is related to experience or time spent in the natural
environment. For example, a landholder who has lived in a region for a long period of
time may strongly identify with that region, but may have weak nature bonds because
he/she has not spent time visiting the natural areas found in that region. We also
recognize that there are interconnections between nature bonding and social bonding.
Nature, or the physical setting, provides the container for social experiences and the
bonds which form through these experiences.

Our model is conceptually similar to the tripartite model of place attachment presented
by Scannell and Gifford (2010a), but there are some important differences. Both
models recognize that connections to place can be based upon social or
environmental attributes of place. Scannell and Gifford (2010b) separated the social
and environmental attributes of place into civic attachment and natural environment
place attachment, respectively, and we divide these attributes into social bonding and
nature bonding, respectively. We explicitly separate attributes of the person into place
identity and place dependence and the attributes of the community into social bonding,
but these object differences are implicit within the natural environment place
attachment and civic place attachment dimensions of the tripartite model. Our model
does not consider how affect, cognition, and behavior are manifested in place
attachment, whereas the tripartite model considers the psychological process as a
separate dimension of place attachment. We empirically test our model at the regional
scale, whereas Scannell and Gifford (2010b) test their model at the community scale.
Despite the differences, both models make an important contribution to the place
attachment literature.

Our integrated model is based on a positivistic or psychometric approach to place

scholarship which involves hypothesis testing researcher-defined variables (see
Trentelman, 2009). We develop a series of scale items to measure four dimensions of
place attachment and then test hypotheses about the validity and reliability of the
place attachment model. Whilst we adopt a positivistic method, there are also
qualitative approaches to place scholarship which have an important role in place
attachment research. Qualitative research has focused on place-specific, unique
meanings (e.g., Devine-Wright and Howes, in press, Gustafson, 2001, Manzo, 2003,
Manzo, 2005, Stokowski, 2002) using social constructionist or applied natural resource
social sciences approaches. Social constructionism is concerned with how place is
socially constructed, by whom, and with what interests, while the applied approach
attempts to convince environmental managers to include meaning-oriented
dimensions of “place” in management decisions (see Trentelman, 2009).

The remainder of this paper aims to empirically test our conceptual model. Following
other studies (e.g., Williams & Vaske, 2003), it is expected that place identity and
dependence will emerge as two separate dimensions of place attachment. Consistent
with the connectedness to nature theory (Schultz et al., 2004), we hypothesize that
nature bonding will emerge as a separate dimension of place attachment with high
construct validity and reliability. Further, in line with the community attachment theory
presented by Kyle and colleagues (Kyle et al., 2005), we hypothesize that social
bonding will emerge as a separate dimension of place attachment with high construct
validity and reliability. Another important component of our model is that each
individual is situated within a place that has a personal, community, and natural
environment context. It is hypothesized that the strength and nature of our
attachments to place change in accordance with the personal, environmental, and
community context in which landholders operate. For example, the strength of social
bonds that ‘landholder A’ has with ‘natural resource management region A’ may be
weaker than the social bonds ‘landholder B’ has with ‘natural resource management
region B’.

Our approach involved three mail-based surveys across three distinct populations: The
Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges, South Australia, Northern and Yorke region, South
Australia, and the South Australian Murray-Darling Basin (SAMDB). Semi-structured
interviews conducted with landholders in the Eyre Peninsula region informed the
development of the original place attachment scale (Raymond, 2009). This scale is
first tested in the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges region (study 1). Results from this
survey were then used to inform and refine the survey instrument in the Northern and
Yorke and SAMDB regions (study 2).