Hernándeza, B., M. C. Hidalgob, M. E. Salazar-Laplacea & S. Hess, 2007, Place attachment and place identity in natives and non-natives, in: Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27, 3
- Author : Hernándeza, B., M. C. Hidalgob, M. E. Salazar-Laplacea & S. Hess
- Year : 2007
- Title English : Place attachment and place identity in natives and non-natives
- Journal/Series : Journal of Environmental Psychology
- Volume Number (ANNUAL: Counting Volumes of the Year shown above) : 3
- Volume Number (CONSECUTIVE: Counting all Volumes of this Journal ever published) : 27
- Pages : 310-319
- Abstract in English : Place attachment is an affective bond that people establish with specific areas where they prefer to remain and where they feel comfortable and safe. Place identity, however, has been defined as a component of personal identity, a process by which, through interaction with places, people describe themselves in terms of belonging to a specific place. From our point of view, place attachment and place identity are two concepts that frequently overlap due to the fact that the samples used in most studies (native persons who have resided in that place for a long time) show a high level of both place attachment and place identity. In this way, correlations between them are always high, and it is difficult to empirically establish which link precedes the other. In this study, we set out to compare the levels of place attachment and place identity in two different samples: natives who have always resided in their place of origin and non-natives with a moderate length of residence (the group of non-natives was in turn divided into two groups according to their place of origin). The main objective was to analyse differences between attachment and identity within these groups. We consider place attachment to be an affective bond that arises relatively quickly because of interaction with the environment although it takes some time to reach its culmination (Hay, 1998a), while place identity is a more complex, long-term process. The results of the research show that place attachment and place identity behave similarly in the case of natives born and raised in the same place but differently in the case of non-natives. We also confirm that natives establish more intense links, whether of attachment or identity, with the island, the city and finally, with the neighbourhood where they live. In the case of the extra-island group and immigrants, there are no relevant differences between the three environments studied.
- Comments/Notes : KEYWORDS: Place attachment; Place identity; Natives; Immigrants; Length of residence