The Effect Of Perceived Social Environment Quality On Place Attachment With The Multi-scalar Perspective

Place attachment is defined as the positive bonding of people and the particular places and has gained much attention across the fields of environmental psychology, ecology, human geography and so forth. Many studies have supported that residents’ place attachment played an important role in sustainable development of people and environment in urbanization background. Nevertheless, it is unclear that the crucial factors which have influences on place attachment and the internal functional paths as a part of mechanisms shaping people-place relationships, especially, in the progress of promoting all-round economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological among Chinese. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the perceived quality of social environment on people’s place attachment and the mediated role of restorative experience in the relationship between the perceived quality of social environment and place attachment.Based on the person-process-place organizing framework of place attachment, two studies were conducted. First, we investigated the evaluation of place attachment (i.e. place dependence and place identity) and restorative experience people (N=136) perceived through the informations about a community (/neighborhood) in three conditions including negative, neutral, or positive social environment. Study 2 sought to expand the study scale from community (Study 1) to city via a survey among residents (N=362) to identify the prediction of perceived quality of neighborhood social environment to people’s place attachment (to the city) and the role of restorative experience (about the neiborhood) in this progress. Besides, the effects of the type of community, birthplace and the length of residence on people’s place attachment were examined following the previous literature.Empirical results indicated that people associated the quality of social environment and the corresponding expected restorative experience and place attachment to the community. In particular, the social environment seemed unable to increase place attachment when its quality was positive but was able to decrease place attachment when its quality was negative. In addition, restorative experience had the mediation effects on the relationship between neighborhood social environment and place attachment to community and city, respectively. Besides, place identity to the city had been found to be predicted by place dependence to the same setting. Moreover, dwellers living in college campus who were natives reported higher place attachment than those living in the same place who were non-natives and dwellers living in civic community in regardless of their birthplaces.