Incorporating Physical Environment-Related Factors in an Assessment of Community Attachment: Understanding Urban Park Contributions

Ying Xu, David Matarrita-Cascante, Jae Ho Lee and A.E. Luloff
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Ying Xu: School of Geography and Tourism, Shaanxi Normal University, Chang’an, Xi’an 710119, China
David Matarrita-Cascante: Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
Jae Ho Lee: Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
A.E. Luloff: Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 20, 1-19

Abstract: Community sociologists have examined community attachment through an almost exclusive focus on people’s social relations. Recent research efforts have noted the neglect of the physical place in traditional community sociological studies. Doing this has brought the physical environment into their discussions of community attachment. Despite this progress, we remain limited in our understanding of the physical environment’s contribution to peoples’ attachment to their communities and whether its effect on community attachment is applicable in the context of urban settings. In an effort to expand our knowledge of this topic, this study explored the contributions of the urban physical environment on community attachment. By selecting the Discovery Green Park as a typical form of physical environment in Houston, Texas, this study sought to investigate how people’s levels of community attachment could be predicted by: (1) peoples’ interactions with an urban park; (2) people’s emotional connections with such a park; and (3) peoples’ social interactions with others within the park. After conducting a series of block model regression analyses, we found that community attachment was not completely defined by social factors, but also depended upon peoples’ emotional connections with the local physical environment and the social interactions happening in those settings.

Keywords: community attachment; physical-natural related factors; urban parks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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