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Departamento de Psicologia Cognitiva, Campus de Guajara, s/n 38205La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
Departamento de Psicologa Social, Universidad de Malaga, Campus de Teatinos, s/n 29071 Malaga, Spain
c
Departamento de Psicobiologa y Metodologa de las CC del Comportamiento, Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara,
s/n 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
b
Abstract
Place attachment is an affective bond that people establish with specic areas where they prefer to remain and where they feel
comfortable and safe. Place identity, however, has been dened as a component of personal identity, a process by which, through
interaction with places, people describe themselves in terms of belonging to a specic place. Most research has observed positive
correlations between these variables in populations that have maintained ongoing interactions over long periods of time. This work
presents two studies in which we compare place attachment to place identity in samples differentiated according to birthplace and length
of residence, and the magnitude of these bonds to different places. The results of the rst study revealed differences between intensity of
attachment and identity depending on place of origin and place assessed. The second study found that identity and attachment tend to
coincide in natives, while individuals from other places give higher scores for attachment than for identity. Results from the two studies
have enabled us to consider that place attachment develops before place identity, at least in the case of the non-natives. Both studies
reveal that bonds are stronger with the city than with the neighbourhood, but that attachment and identity with the island are stronger
than either of them.
r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Place attachment; Place identity; Natives; Immigrants; Length of residence
1. Introduction
The study of the feelings that people develop towards
signicant places in their lives is receiving increasingly
more attention from Environmental Psychology, while the
concept of place attachment lies at the heart of these
studies (Altman & Low, 1992; Brown, Perkin, & Brown,
2003; Giuliani, 2003; Manzo, 2003; Knez, 2005; Kyle,
Graefe, & Manning, 2005). Along with the idea that
attachment is a positive, affective link between an
individual and a specic place, one of the main features
would be the tendency to maintain close relations with such
a place (Hidalgo & Hernandez, 2001). We can therefore
dene place attachment as the affective link that people
establish with specic settings, where they tend to remain
and where they feel comfortable and safe (Hidalgo &
Hernandez, 2001).
Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 922 317519; fax: +34 922 317461.
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2.1. Method
Origin
Island
City
Neighbourhood
2.1.1. Participants
The 139 students from La Laguna University, in
Tenerife (Canary Islands) (62% female and 38% male),
Natives
Intra-island
Extra-island
20.73
20.64
3.48
19.90
5.48
3.01
17.14
4.35
2.16
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Table 2
Cronbachs a coefcients for the scales of identity and attachment to the
island, city and neighbourhood
Environment
Place attachment
Place identity
Island
City
Neighbourhood
0.96
0.94
0.95
0.96
0.94
0.94
6
Island-attach
Island-ident
City-attach
City-ident
Neigh-attach
Neigh-ident
2.2. Results
Owing to the irregular size of the three groups studied,
we checked the homogeneity of the covariances for all
items in the questionnaire. Boxs M test was statistically
non-signicant (F(741, 36; 666) 1,083), which elimi-
1
Natives
Intra-island
Extra-island
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Table 3
Correlation coefcients between length of residence in each place with
place attachment and place identity
Length in neighbour
AttachNeighb
AttachCity
AttachIsland
IdentNeighb
IdentCity
IdenIsland
0.307
0.457
Length in city
0.466
0.546
Length in island
0.673
0.759
po0.01.
2.3. Discussion
The results obtained have revealed that attachment and
identity behave differently in natives and non-natives.
Thus, for the group of natives, as was to be expected, there
are no differences between bonds with the island or city.
However, this is not so for neighbourhood, where
attachment is greater than identity. On the other hand,
non-natives, as was to be expected, show a higher level of
attachment than identity, except for persons who have
moved within the same island (intra-island group), who
demonstrate equal levels of identity and attachment to
island.
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6
Island-attach
Island-ident
City-attach
City-ident
Neigh-attach
Neigh-ident
3.2. Results
4
Place attachment
Place identity
Island
City
Neighbourhood
0.96
0.94
0.96
0.97
0.96
0.96
1
Natives
Immigrants
Table 5
Correlation coefcients between length of residence in each place with
place attachment and place identity
Length in neighbour
AttachNeighb
AttachCity
AttachIsland
IdentNeighb
IdentCity
IdenIsland
po0.01.
0.253
0.409
Length in city
0.399
0.489
Length in island
0.545
0.692
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