A study of place attachment

Improvements in technology, transport and communication have given people choice on where to live and conduct business. Today, place managers have the ability and the opportunity to design and implement activities to attract and/or retain residents in a particular place. Place marketing literature has given limited consideration to place attachment and whether it can play a role in the process of attracting and retaining residents to a place. Place attachment is the bond between people and their place. Place scale in this study includes house (single family home or apartment), suburb (spatially limited area from a block to a section of the city) and city (mix of housing, demographics). Following a review of place attachment studies, place attachment was measured relative to its physical (form and space) and social (emotional) dimensions and applied to the scale of house, suburb and city. Seven hypotheses were tested based on attachment and gender, age, income, length of residency, suburb of residency, property ownership and living situation. The chi-square statistic was significant for five of the seven hypotheses. This research shows that place attachment is not a unitary concept. The variables tested show differences in the relationship with place attachment and also between the place scales of house, suburb and city. The findings show that place marketers need to understand the types of attachment that is important to different residents if successful resident attraction/retention strategies are to occur. The questionnaire developed in this thesis can effectively measure place attachment and aid more informed decisions for the betterment of places.