The Measurement of Place Attachment: Validity and Generalizability of a Psychometric Approach

By Daniel R. Williams, Jerry J. Vaske. Forestry sciences, 2003

1,748 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To enhance land managers' ability to address deeper landscape meanings and place-specific symbolic values in natural resource decision making, this study evaluated the psychometric properties of a place attachment measure designed to capture the extent of emotions and feelings people have for places. Building on previous measurement efforts, this study examined the validity and generalizability of place attachment across measurement items, places, and dimensions (place dependence and place identity) of attachment. Colorado State University students (n = 65) rated four forest-based recreation sites on two dimensions of place attachment. In addition, data from a sample of University of Illinois students (n = 380) and visitors to Shenandoah National Park (n = 2005) and Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area (n = 369) were analyzed and compared to the Colorado sample. Confirmatory factor analysis of these four data sets demonstrated that subjects distinguish between two dimensions of attachment and assign different levels of attachment to the different areas. Generalizability analysis of the Colorado data provided additional evidence for the two-dimensional structure and suggested that each attachment dimension can be reliably measured with as few as four questionnaire items. Convergent validity was supported through analyses of the relationships between the place attachment measures and both behavioral and psychological variables predicted to be related to place attachment.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e99ff3fc9e92dad28c06de831b26b0ff34c3fe8

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Citations in the corpus

The moderating effect of place attachment on the relationship between festival quality and behavioral intentions (2017, background): “This result is consistent with some studies (Gross & Brown, 2006; Williams & Vaske, 2003) that view place identity embracing both cognitive (symbolic) and emotional (affective) elements.”
Identifying Optimal Rapport-Building Behaviors In Inducing Patrons’ Emotional Attachment In Luxury Restaurants (2014, background): “Williams and Vaske (2003) found that people tend to have emotional attachments toward specific sites of land, a feeling that is referred to as nostalgia.”
The Mediating Effect of Place Attachment on the Relationship between Festival Satisfaction and Loyalty to the Festival Hosting Destination (2012, background): “…to understanding human connections to place, place attachment in the leisure literature has been conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of place identity and place dependence (Moore and Graefe 1994; Warzecha and Lime 2001; Williams and Roggenbuck 1989; Williams and Vaske 2003).”
Residents’ Place Satisfaction and Place Attachment on Destination Brand-Building Behaviors: Conceptual and Empirical Differentiation (2018, background): “…attachment (Lewicka 2005, 2008, 2011); place identity (Lewicka 2008; Proshansky, Fabian, and Kaminof 1983; Twigger-Ross, Bonaiuto, and Breakwell 2003; Uzzell, Pol, and Badenas 2002); rootedness (McAndrew 1998); place dependence (Williams and Vaske 2003); place satisfaction (Bonaiuto 2004), etc.”
Measuring Tourists’ Emotional Experiences toward Hedonic Holiday Destinations (2010, background): “Social theorists have long hypothesized that places or destinations are sources of identification and affiliation that provide meaning and purpose to life (e.g., Williams and Vaske 2003).”
Empirical study of destination loyalty and its antecedent: the perspective of place attachment (2011, methodology): “This measurement of place attachment follows the items of Williams and Vaske (2003) scale, including two dimensions of place identity and place dependence with total 12 questions as a foundation for measuring place attachment.”
Place attachment in a foreign settlement (2009, methodology): “The Likert-type scale method was used in this instance because using this type measure in previous place attachment studies proved very successful in the past (see Williams & Vaske, 2003).”
Effects of place attachment on users’ perceptions of social and environmental conditions in a natural setting (2004, background): “…with regard to the managerial philosophy underlying public land management within the United States (Mitchell, Force, Carroll, & McLaughlin, 1993; Brandenburg & Carroll, 1995; Williams, 1995; Williams & Stewart, 1998; Eisenhauer, Krannich, & Blahna, 2000; Stokowski, 2002; Williams & Vaske, 2003).”
Antecedents of Tourists’ Loyalty to Mauritius (2012, methodology): “Nonetheless, the tendency among researchers in tourism and other fields seems to be fewer items that have greater reliability and validity (Gross and Brown 2008; Hou, Lin, and Morais 2005; Williams and Vaske 2003; Yuksel, Yuksel, and Bilim 2010).”
Place Bonding for Recreation Places: Conceptual and Empirical Development (2006, methodology): “…traditionally conceptualized the bonding phenomenon between users and resource places as place attachment, consisting of the two primary dimensions of place identity and dependence (Williams et al., 1992; Moore & Graefe, 1994; Bricker & Kerstetter, 2000; Williams & Vaske, 2003; Kyle et al., 2004).”
Destination loyalty explained through place attachment, destination familiarity and destination image (2020, background): “…a number of researchers, place dependence and place identity are the two primary components of place attachment (Strzelecka, Boley, & Woosnam, 2017; Williams & Vaske, 2003; Yuksel, Yuksel, & Bilim, 2010), while for others, sense of place is a sub-dimension of place attachment (Kyle, Graefe,…”