A narrative approach to the formation of place attachments in landscapes of expanding renewable energy technology

Abstract

Renewable energy technologies are expanding in rural landscapes, where they are changing the character and meaning of place. This study explores the experience of living and recreating in proximity to landscapes undergoing this development, namely in a Swedish municipality where a major wind park is located. Using place attachment, it addresses how people construct meaning around places of everyday life through stories of their experience of place. Results show that individuals form coherent narratives of the past, present and future of places undergoing transformation. Stories of experiences of renewable energy technology and their impact on landscape relate to persisting feelings of rootedness, changing land-use activities and hope for a sustainable future. Place attachments are a form of social action as their formulation enables people to deal with change and embrace discourses of sustainability. Results highlight the discourses and practices that rural dwellers adopt in the wake of renewable energy transitions.

Keywords:

• Renewable energy technologies
• narratives
• rural landscape
• rural dwelling
• place attachment
• qualitative research
• Sweden

Introduction

To bring greater energy security and limit climate change, EU member-states are transitioning towards renewable energy systems. However, the development of renewable energy technologies (RET) in rural areas transforms the multiple meanings that rural dwellers assign to places where RET are implemented, which in turn affects how these people bond with their everyday surroundings (Picchi, van Lierop, Geneletti, & Stremke, 2019). The changing character of a place is an important matter to address in research and planning because place bonding is foundational to the preservation of community social fabric (Plieninger et al., 2015) and directly impacts a community’s engagement with its landscape (Altman & Low, 1992). Concerns about RET are particularly palpable in rural areas that benefit from the quality and aesthetic experience of their landscape (Broekel & Alfken, 2015; Ólafsdóttir & Saeþórsdóttir, 2019). Much of the opposition to RET development relates to the negative impacts of its infrastructure on environments that provide people with valued experiences that improve their quality of life.

The organisation of rural landscapes into stages of RET expansion forces researchers and planners to reassess the form, function and value of familiar landscapes (Bridge, Bouzarovski, Bradshaw, & Eyre, 2013). The European Landscape Convention recognises that people’s interaction with landscape is central to their identity as an expression of their culture and heritage (Laven, Wall-Reinius, & Fredman, 2015). However, bonds that people form with their environment are rarely addressed in planning (Stenseke, 2016). Moreover, research taking a social perspective on RET development tends to be limited to factors driving either stakeholders support for or opposition to RET. The above fails to provide insights on how place attachments are formed within dynamic social contexts in which affective bonds evolve to accommodate new realities.

By interpreting the narratives of the everyday experience of living and recreating in landscapes of expanding RET, this study seeks to understand how people-place bonds develop in the wake of the significant changes that rural landscapes currently undergo. To that end, we employ the theoretical lens of place attachment to address how people construct meaning around places of everyday life undergoing transformation. We find this meaning in stories people told about their experience of living and recreating closely to the expanding Åby-Alebo Wind Park in Sweden. Specifically, we focussed on stories of rural dwellers who find value in the landscape through their everyday embeddedness in a place (Johansen, Fisker, & Thuesen, 2021; Wall-Reinius, Prince, & Dahlberg, 2019). Our results divulge persisting feelings of rootedness to place, changing land-use activities and hope for a sustainable future for the community and beyond. We consider place attachments as a form of social action since their formulation enables people to form coherent meaning to proactively deal with change and embrace wider socio-political discourses of sustainability

Place attachment in landscapes of renewable energy

Place attachment refers to the affective bonds that individuals develop with their environment because of the meanings that they assign to it (Altman & Low, 1992). As a theoretical lens, place attachment focuses on the emergence of individual-place relationships and on perceptions of landscape, asking how and why people relate to certain places and how and when these relationships change. We see place attachment as a dynamic phenomenon that stems from the formation of social meaning and affective bonds in place. In this section, we define place attachment and present theory that explains processes behind its formation. We then review relevant research on place attachment and landscape transformation in the context of RET development.

Place attachment as an affective and social phenomenon

Researchers generally conceptualise place attachment as either a locus of attachment where individual affective bonds explain attachment or as a centre of meaning where the ways in which people construct and express meaning explains processes of attachment (Manzo & de Carvalho, 2021). As an affective bond, place attachment is understood to be adaptive, meaning that the character of the affection felt towards a place influences adaptation to a changing environment (Scannell & Gifford, 2017). The strength and type of place bonds can vary depending on the type of people involved, the formative processes at stake and the physicality of the place (Scannell & Gifford, 2017). Factors that influence the kind of attachment people develop with a place include socio-demographic (i.e. length of residence), social (i.e. community ties and social capital), and physical factors (i.e. beauty of place and presence of amenities) (Scannell, 2013). Place bonding is as such a dynamic phenomenon that forms over time and which derives from emotion, cognition and behaviour.

With a wide variety of emotional bonds that can be felt towards place, it is primarily positive experiences and their associated emotions that ensue desire to maintain a relationship with that place (Scannell & Gifford, 2017). However, positive bonds can be disrupted when a place changes in character or when individuals no longer have access to it in the way they used to (Reineman & Ardoin, 2018). When seeing place attachment as an affective bond, it is apparent that the impact of disruption will differ depending on individual bonds with the place and the nature of the disruption (Devine-Wright, 2011). However, the formulation of place bonds is also embedded in linguistic practices guided by social, cultural and political discourses. What people express as attachment to place is part of larger discourses, often strategically deployed to perform social action (Di Masso et al., 2021). In other words, place attachments are formed through interactional processes as place meanings are collectively created, shared and maintained (Cross, 2015).

Individuals can form bonds with very specific places, such as their homes and neighbourhoods, or with entities on a larger spatial scale, such as cities, regions and countries (Lewicka, 2011; Scannell, 2013). Importantly, the intense mobility of people, goods, technologies, ideas and information has altered the character of places worldwide, strengthening conceptualizations of space as dynamic and multi-scalar (Massey, 2005). In light of the impacts of globalisation upon identities, researchers are increasingly identifying place attachments emerging at the national and global levels amongst individuals and groups (Devine-Wright & Batel, 2017; Gustafson, 2014; Leung, Koh, & Tam, 2015). Thus, despite proliferating extra-local relations, connection to place remains central to human experience. With the expansion of landscapes of RET, it becomes crucial to ask how will place bonds change in the new local-global context. What new meanings will be created and deployed as a result of the emergence of global discourses alongside localised senses of place?

RET and landscape transformations

The concept of landscape is a powerful tool to study the re-articulation of how people-place bonds are created in spaces of transition (Bridge et al., 2013). Concern about the impacts of RET infrastructure are particularly relevant to rural areas benefiting from the quality and aesthetic experiences of a natural landscape. Transformation towards renewable energy systems represents a challenge to the durability of the affective features of such landscapes where people carry out their daily activities (Devine-Wright, 2011). In landscapes undergoing transformation, individuals subjected to spatial change resort to various coping mechanisms (e.g. resisting change, re-instituting place meanings, challenging influential stakeholders) to avoid disruptions and protect their place bonds (Anton & Lawrence, 2016; Woods et al., 2021).

RET infrastructure has been extensively studied to establish the perceptual and attitudinal factors behind its acceptance or opposition amongst stakeholders. Opposition usually occurs when there is perceived threat to the quality and character of a place or when there are unacceptable environmental and health risks anticipated to stem from RET (Broekel & Alfken, 2015; Klain, Satterfield, Sinner, Ellis, & Chan, 2018). Scholars identified factors that influence perceptions of RET, such as opportunities for local actors to participate in decision-making (Devine-Wright, 2011), perceived fairness during development (Bidwell, 2017), and fair distribution of costs and benefits (Klain et al., 2018).

Much opposition to wind power development relates to the perceived negative impacts of its infrastructure on recreational and aesthetic landscape services, such as outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism, which provide people with valued experiences that can improve their quality of life (Ólafsdóttir & Saeþórsdóttir, 2019). In some cases, individuals form their arguments against wind power development by strategically using ideas about tourism. In their research, Mordue, Moss, and Johnston (2020) established that opposition to wind power infrastructure for the sake of tourism development mainly stems from the discourses and practices of stakeholder groups who seek to resist undesired development in landscapes they wish to preserve. Rudolph (2014) highlights that despite numerous surveys depicting no correlation between RET development and decline in visitation and tourism revenue, many residents continue to frame wind turbines as having an impact on the local tourism industry because they wish to preserve community dynamics.

The literature shows no consistent result regarding correlations between levels of place attachment and support for RET. For instance, individuals with strong place attachment are not always against RET. On the contrary, some studies show that stakeholders with strong place attachment accept and support RET installations nearby their communities (Brownlee et al., 2015; Devine-Wright, 2011; van Veelen & Hagget, 2017). This positive relationship is apparent when local populations recognise that a RET project will maintain or even enhance the place’s character. Moreover, Clarke, Murphy, and Lorenzoni (2018) found that proactive adaptations to climate change that disrupt place bonds may be perceived as more acceptable than the conservation of rural landscapes because of fears of having to face climate change. Responses to RET thus depend on how stakeholders understand the potential impacts of its development on the affective features of place in light of various factors.

Åby-Alebo Wind Park

Åby-Alebo Wind Park is situated north-west of the town of Mönsterås in the Mönsterås municipality, itself located in Kalmar county in the south-east of Sweden. Located along the shore, Mönsterås is a medium-sized coastal town. In 2020, the municipality was home to 13 264 inhabitants. With a total land area of almost 600 km², the municipality has a population density of 22.2 people/km², which is just below Sweden’s average of 25.5 people/km². The municipality is popular amongst tourists and rural dwellers alike because of its dense inland forests and archipelagic coastline. Åby-Alebo Wind Park consists of 36 wind turbines, 200 m in height, in operation since 2021. Altogether, this large-scale RET project produces 500 GWh of energy per year, which corresponds to the consumption of electricity for 100 000 houses.

The plan to construct Åby-Alebo Wind Park garnered much attention at the municipality- and county-levels, even amongst individuals with very little connection to the impacted landscape. Prior to the construction phase, there was a period of extensive consultation with relevant stakeholders. As law defines, the operating company, the Swedish Stena Renewable (now Scandinavian Renewable Energy) had first to acquire the permits necessary to build and operate the wind park. Before wind parks can be built, an operator must prepare an environmental impact statement and consult authorities and the general public, including local residents and private landowners. Many rural dwellers live near Åby-Alebo Wind Park (some as close as 2 km). 21 landowners own private property that is part of the wind park, leasing their land to infrastructure development. The fact that people in the municipality have reflected on the situation makes this case particularly relevant for exploring processes surrounding fair renewable energy transitions.

Method

We used a narrative approach to explore how people-place bonds come into being in the context of RET development. Narrative analysis is a potent tool to research the complexity of social realities, serving to examine how knowledge is constructed through acts of storytelling (Riessman, 2008). People tell stories to locate themselves in material and symbolic environments that give them a sense of meaning and stability (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000). As a centre of meaning, place attachment is continuously created through social interactions and dialogues that shape experiences of the self in place (Di Masso et al., 2021). We recognise the importance of: ‘the interactional processes through which place meanings become collectively shared, disseminated and deployed’ (Di Masso et al., 2021, p. 81). Affective bonds are embroiled in assemblages of linguistic and bodily practices as well as material and symbolic entities that give place multiple meanings (Manzo & de Carvalho, 2021). Cross (2015, p. 496) writes that ‘place attachments are formed through personal stories about place as well as ideological traditions that make normative claims about place and who belongs’.

We derived narratives of place attachment and RET development from in-depth interviews. The lead author conducted nine interviews with rural dwellers, four of whom also being landowners, from the Mönsterås municipality. These individuals are both aware of the changing features of the local landscape and could thus discuss the effect of wind power development on their lives, the community and the local economy. In addition, three business stakeholders were interviewed to acquire information about the wind park and its development. These are persons directly involved in the development of Åby-Alebo Wind Park as they work for companies that have a stake in its success. The project manager of the wind park also acted as key informant by helping to get in contact with the landowners involved in the project.

The rural dwellers involved in this study all undertake leisure activities in or close to the wind park project area. Private landowners are also rural dwellers who to some extent also undertake leisure activities in the vicinity of the wind park. However, their connection to the landscape arguably differs because of their ownership and responsibilities over land. All interviews were done using online video meetings. Specific open-ended interview questions were formulated for each stakeholder group, asking them to speak of their role in the area, activities, connection to place and thoughts for the future. The interviews lasted on average 60 min. The lead author transcribed all the interviews herself afterwards. To gather observations, the lead author also visited the wind park and its surrounding area on three different occasions.

The interview data was manually analysed. First, transcripts were read several times and the ideas emerging in the process were noted. From there, a variety of patterns were identified. The lead author coded these patterns in a first instances. During a second round of coding, she merged the codes into categories. Finally, the categories became the themes presented below. To preserve the anonymity of the study participants, they are identified as PL(n) when they are landowners and R(n) if they are just rural dwellers.

Results and analysis

Through three sub-sections, we present the stories that rural dwellers told about their experience of RET development and its impact on the affective features of the landscape. These stories relate to persisting feelings of rootedness to place, changing land-use activities and hope for a sustainable future for the community and beyond. Apparent in the themes is how the formulation of attachments enables people to proactively deal with change and embrace discourses of sustainability.

Memories as attachment

Though wind turbines affect the features of landscapes, their presence in Mönsterås did not stop the study participants from articulating a sense of rootedness to the municipality and its landscape when asked to speak of their experience of the place. In fact, that sense of rootedness made many study participants come back to Mönsterås after having left the municipality for some years. In our study, all participants but two were born in the municipality of Mönsterås and had moved away for a certain time, ranging from a few years up to over two decades, before moving back as adults. Tertiary education and job opportunities were the most important motivation that led these individuals to move away during early adulthood. Now, for these individuals, Mönsterås served as a home-base to return to. They described their bond to the municipality by speaking of it as a place where they found stability. For instance, after being away for eight years, PL2 moved back to the family farm, saying this about her experience of moving back: ‘And the feelings…the place means a lot to me, this is home, it is safety, it is an old family farm. Yes, it means really a lot to me’. In light of intense mobility, places can serve as sources of continuity in people’s lives as they provide with the memories and habits that afford a bridge between the past and the present (Lewicka, 2021).

Importantly, social interaction and family connections provide with the memories necessary to express an attachment to place in the present and also guide future action (Altman & Low, 1992; Cross, 2015). A popular reason to return to Mönsterås was to raise children, often in relation to one’s own positive childhood experiences of living in a rural area. Here, the landscape holds personal and cultural value as it functions as a beacon of memories and traditions in which people can identify and find well-being (Butler et al., 2018). As an example, R4 and her husband left the city and moved into the house where R4 grew up because she wanted her children to experience the outdoors, which she remembers as bringing her positive feelings:

I can give my children the same opportunities that I had when I was a kid: the opportunity to just open the door and go out and just feel the grass.

As the tradition of playing outside is something that she wants to pass on to her children, R4 knew that returning to a small town was the right thing to do. PL3 and his wife were born and raised in Mönsterås and lived in Belgium for seven years. They wanted their children to learn Swedish and experience Swedish culture, so they moved back to Mönsterås. We see that place attachments derive from engagements with place based in the past and are rearticulated in the present to serve a specific purpose for the future.

People form bonds to places by actively formulating the sense of continuity they need from it to feel safe, which happens in different ways, such as through sharing memories of the past and discussing the history of the place (Lewicka, 2021). Some private land owners expressed their attachment to place by speaking of the historical connection they felt with their land. Many of them were able to connect specific physical elements of the land with family memories, especially if the land had been in the family for a long time. PL2 said:

It is nothing special for anybody else, but for me it is special. I know every rock, every tree. And [this land] has been in my family for a long time, so I know this is the stone where my grandfather shot a moose. On this hill, that’s where something happened with the tractor. I know the history of everything here.

We see that positive experiences of place from the past are narrated as attachments to place in the present. Sometimes, the continuity with the past and the present extended to the future as study participants spoke of their wish to see their children live a good life where they were raised and feel bonds towards these places. PL1 demonstrated this point of view by saying:

When you have an estate, you build something; you put something together for the next generation. I'm the 5th generation here. I have two children. They are in their mid-40s. They are also part owners in this estate now. I hope they will take over when I can’t do it. That they are interested feels good to me.

Trough stories, we see that: ‘individuals learn about the history of a place, the cultural meanings of that place, their place as individuals in both the landscape and the culture, and stake a claim about their membership in community’ (Cross, 2015, p. 497). The practice of narrating a coherent past, present and future will be further evident in narratives surrounding Åby-Alebo Wind Park and RET development.

Attachments to deal with a changing landscape

The places the study participants have come back to have obviously changed over the years, including due to the development of RET infrastructure. Of course, RET development is recognised to have a high social and physical impact on landscapes and their ecosystem services. However, serious changes to the local forest landscape were not limited to the recent insertion of wind turbines in it. It was explained that the fact that the area is now forested actually attests to years of changing human practices. PL2 highlighted monotony in the forest landscape, saying that he is saddened that the area has transformed into forest while before the turn of the century it featured what he called a ‘living landscape’. The landscape of the past he described was one of quaint rural villages and small fields for family farming (see Figure 1). For PL2, these small villages and family farms are the essences of the Swedish cultural landscape.

Figure 1. The typical red houses and small farms are iconic parts of the Swedish cultural landscape. Photo by Solène Prince (2022).

R5 also expressed that it is especially important to preserve the cultural landscape of fields and meadows where cows and sheep can graze, and which in the area is fenced by traditional stone walls. She feels that the preservation of this kind of cultural landscape should be prioritised over the re-forestation of large areas. Such change to the places where she recreates worries her more than the building of a wind park in a forested area:

I feel like that needs to be preserved; the fields and meadows, and the stone walls. That kind of cultural landscape is more I think what to preserve and not [forests of] planted trees. Like this open landscape, when you see, cows, sheep… And of course, woods. But like, we have a lot of woods. Unfortunately, we don’t have that much left of the original woods, instead we have a lot of planted woods. We need more open areas in those kinds of areas where we go biking. I think that is more beautiful.

The narrative above demonstrates that it cannot be assumed that all rural dwellers are highly attached to any type of landscape to be impacted by RET development. Bonds to place change over time as places acquire new symbolic meaning in social context (Cross, 2015). In this case, we see apathy amongst some study participants towards forested areas as they are not seen to provide the safety and cultural linkage to place that makes for strong place attachments. Old-growth forests and the traditional cultural landscape have more socio-cultural value for rural dwellers and have disappeared in the area due to other phenomena than RET development.

Even before the construction of the wind park had started people were readjusting their attachment to place due to the impacts of changing land-use activities. These concerns made way for discussions over the greater role of RET development for the area. Study participants mostly proposed that the selected area in the municipality is appropriate for RET development because a wind park would help the local economy. Mostly, these installations generate jobs, which represents an incentive to remain in the area. The trend of outmigration was mentioned by some who deplored the amount of people moving out of the area. R2 connected outmigration to the construction of the wind park:

Many people are moving out from these places. So, some houses are like falling apart. I think there is a reason why they put the wind turbines there because there are [just] some people left.

For R3, the most pressing question facing the municipality is how to retain people in the area. Thinking about the forested area where the wind park is located, she wonders: how can the people of the area make a living from the forest, whilst protecting old-growth forest? To her, those are more important matters than the destruction of a small parcel of wood for RET development.

The meaning that people attribute to a place is embedded in the extra-local processes that change the physicality and symbolic identity of that place (Massey, 2005). What matters for these people is finding a sense of continuity in a context of depopulation and economic decline. van Veelen and Hagget (2017) indicate that when communities are threatened by socio-economic decline, they are more likely to understand RET development as a positive alternative for the future of their community. In such cases, place attachment relates to discourses of community perpetuation and is formulated to support local RET development projects.

This study also unearthed negative reactions towards local RET development. Private landowners mentioned noise as their biggest concern regarding potential negative impact of the wind park on their lives. PL3 expects the noisy wind turbines to have an impact on his hunting activities. He explains that he hunts with dogs and he worries that it will be harder to hear the dogs barking over this noise. PL1 also bemoaned the loss of silence in nature, adding ‘you are not in an untouched area any longer’. These changes clash with the deep appreciation people often have of nature as a place to be alone and feel peace (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The wind turbines of Åby-Alebo Wind Park are visible and audible from the Mönsterås nature trail. Photo by Solène Prince (2022).

Despite concerns and negative views, a form of acceptance transpired in the narratives of the study participants. For instance, R5 mentioned that her biking activities in the area will be impacted by the presence of the wind park since it will degrade the quality of the forest and change the road system she uses. She hinted nonetheless that she would get used to this change:

My husband told me (they went biking there two weeks ago): “well the positive thing is that if we want to go biking close to [the river] Emån, and some beautiful places around, we will come faster there now”. We won’t have to go on small trails when we bike, we just go on this ‘highway’. For me, it is not a big deal, but, of course, they destroy the nature.

Similarly, the private landowners believed that people who live and recreate in the area would quickly get used to the changes wrought by the wind park. According to PL3, people would eventually stop thinking about the presence of wind turbines and animals would get used to them, indicating that he considers the impacts to be rather small and thus manageable. For him, the area has always been a place for recreation, such as for hunting and picking berries and mushrooms. Ultimately, it was possible for study participants to articulate a form of continuity regardless of the changes to the landscape. Rural dwellers find value in the landscape through their everyday embeddedness in a place (Johansen et al., 2021; Wall-Reinius et al., 2019). Here, RET is made sense of in a context of rural dwelling where the landscape provides recreation and well-being.

Attachments that support sustainability

It was impossible for the study participants not to speak of the effects of climate change on the landscape when asked about their perception Åby-Alebo Wind Park. Namely, both R3 and PL1 brought up the issue of the spruce bark beetle, a tiny insect that nestles in spruce and pine trees and often ends up killing them if the trees have previously been weakened or damaged. The insect has spread quickly over large forested areas in the past years in Sweden due to the warming climate that aids its reproduction and survival (see Figure 3). R3 and PL1 noted that the trees that host this insect need to be taken out of the forest to protect it. In Mönsterås municipality, citizens protest about the lack of measures being taken by relevant authorities. According to PL1, landowners are very worried about the impact of the spruce bark beetle on their forests; for some it is more economically impactful than the changes caused by RET development because at least the operation of wind turbines generates income.

Figure 3. Damages caused by the spruce bark beetle are visible in the foreground of this view of Åby-Alebo Wind Park. Photo by Solène Prince (2022).

The harm caused to forests by the spruce bark beetle is only one example of an affective human-landscape relationship wrought by climate change. In Sweden, forest fires are a common consequence of the drier and hotter summers now prevailing in the northern hemisphere. During the 2018 European Heat Wave, the country saw its largest number of wildfires. Duly, forest fires are what R1 is most afraid of as a rural dweller: Yet, by anticipating change, R1 intends not to be ruled by the fear of danger. She says: ‘I think we should not be afraid, but we should be cautious and pay attention to the world around us’. Her reflection shows a readiness to adapt to a changing landscape. She understands that new practices have to be adopted after catastrophes to be able to continue to live in an impacted area. These new practices will eventually stabilise into new place attachments for those seeking to reproduce a sense of continuity in places of everyday activity (Butler et al., 2018).

The rhetoric of meeting energy needs in a context of uncertainty was evident in the study participants’ narratives. Importantly, the future of energy production concerned them and they could see the benefits of RET infrastructure. R2, R3 and R5, who recognised the need for more energy production in the region, talked seriously about alternatives to nuclear power. Nuclear power is controversial due to its devastating effects when catastrophes occur and the challenge of nuclear waste management. The Mönsterås municipality lies next to the municipality of Oskarshamn where there is a nuclear power plant. It is thus not surprising that such concerns arose in the study. R5 said:

Now the people who live in Alebo, I think they don’t want the wind park to be there. I think we have to keep up if we want to shut the nuclear power stations. I think we need alternatives, like wind power and stuff like that. I can understand for people who live there that they do not want it, but still I think in a few years they will get used to it, like every time when new stuff comes. You adapt or adjust. But still, I think we need it, the wind power.

Although it is unclear to whom ‘we’ refers to, this quote outlines nonetheless a belief that society is better off with renewable energy sources like wind power, rather than relying solely on nuclear power. Such narratives over the common fate of a collectivity indicate that place attachments form within a context of global environmental values that encourages individuals to think beyond their own place-based interests. Attachments to place are here articulated through discourses of adaptation and adjustment, signalling a belief that everyone needs to do their share to be part of a proactive community that extends beyond an immediate living space.

Private landowners described RET development as a positive form of economic development, which one should be proud of supporting in the global fight against climate change. While the money that landowners earn from leasing their land to RET companies is an important incentive to get involved, this is not the sole incentive. PL3 explains that there is a need for local electricity as it is difficult and expensive to transfer electricity over large distances from the north of the country. Hence, Åby-Alebo Wind Park is of great importance, and it feels good to contribute the physical space needed to place turbines somewhere. PL2 is also enthusiastic about how good land owners can feel about supporting RET:

I'm quite sure that for most landowners, it is the money that is the main motivation to participate. But on the other hand, if we would not produce renewable energy, maybe they would have turned down the money. So, it is not purely about money for anybody, because we all think this is a good project. It feels good.

PL2 argued that, though the introduction of wind turbines in the area causes physical changes, he appreciates the new landscape. It gives him a good feeling to know that he contributes to a sustainable future by allowing RET development on his land. As the world faces a global environmental crisis, it is fair to say that people are developing a consciousness that forces them to re-think how they conceptualise their attachment to local landscapes (Running, 2013). What actions are acceptable and fair in a global context of risk influence perceptions of proactive adaptations to climate change at the local level (Clarke et al., 2018). Here, wind turbines are associated with broader discourses of sustainability than community sustainability. Place attachment, in the form of pride of owning land and carefully managing it for future generation, is framed as a contribution to sustainable energy solutions.

Conclusion

RET is quickly expanding into rural landscapes where it has caused mixed-feelings amongst local populations who fear its impact on local landscapes. These technologies will continue to expand in rural landscapes with more regions worldwide seeking transition to a low-carbon economy. While arguments supporting RET development are plentiful, its local impacts on land-use practices and landscape aesthetics make renewable energy transitions a controversial matter in terms of its power to reorganise local space (Bridge et al., 2013). RET projects near rural communities can have significant localised environmental, social, and economic impacts on people and places (Klain et al., 2018; Picchi et al., 2019). It will be crucial for politicians and planners to understand the discourses and practices that rural dwellers adopt in light of the expansion of RET in rural landscapes if they are to make decisions that benefit rural people and places.

Our study reveals the multifaced attachments that rural dwellers feel towards a landscape that is constantly transforming. The themes we propose demonstrate how bonds between people and place manifest in narration that brings coherence to the past, present and future of a place undergoing change. The stories we uncovered pertained to persisting feelings of rootedness to place, changing land-use activities and hope for a sustainable future for the community and beyond. It was also apparent that formulating attachments enables people to deal with change and embrace discourses of sustainability.

People’s understanding of the impacts of RET development on rural landscapes exists within broader understandings of the impacts of global processes. Place attachment in the context of RET development does not exist outside of the multitude of discourses and practices that form space in the age of intense mobility, global environmental crisis and rural depopulation. It was apparent that landscapes of RET infrastructure already represent breakings from previous place attachments that required adaptation. RET development did not seem to provoke the most nostalgia over how things used to be as cultural landscapes in the municipality are already disappearing due to abandonment. Some changes wrought by climate change threaten place attachment more than the presence of wind turbines (i.e. wildfires and beetle invasions). Place attachments change in their rhetorical clout as they are reformulated to serve new affective and socio-political purposes. In this study, place attachments served to support policy to contain harmful insects, preach about global sustainability and champion alertness to forest fires.

Of importance is not only the strength and character of the bonds that people form with place, but also the actual habits and routines that transform places and afford them with their distinct meaning (Ingold, 2011; Prince, 2019). For rural dwellers, being with family, forestry, playing outside, picking berries and hunting are all activities that anchor them in a place of meaning. RET is thus made sense of in a context of rural dwelling where the landscape provides, and should continue to provide, recreation and well-being. A sense of continuity is also sought when positioning RET development as beneficial for community resilience. A landscape can keep providing ecosystem services to its users even in the wake of drastic physical change if its stakeholders still feel that they can meaningfully engage with it. Place attachments can after all be articulated for the purpose of supporting RET development if the latter is believed to foster community perpetuation.

During interviews, participants spoke of the values and emotions they attach to the landscape as rural dwellers, but also as landowners, recreationists, family-members, global citizens and community activists. Using a qualitative approach allowed us to explore these various affective relationships and productions of place meaning (Manzo & de Carvalho, 2021). As the expansion of RET infrastructure continues to cause localised tensions and opposition, it becomes crucial to capture the nuances, ambivalence, situatedness and multiplicity of meanings that form rural landscapes in order to adopt fair solutions. A qualitative approach also accentuates the networked and multiscalar character of the places towards which people form attachments (Di Masso et al., 2019) as well as the human experience of spatial processes wrought by transitional changes (Bridge et al., 2013). As more rural communities face challenges due to climate change, more research should take seriously the stories people tell about their attachment to place; how they tell them and why they tell them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yvonne Goudriaan

Yvonne Goudriaan has a master’s degree in sustainable tourism from Linnaeus University. This article is based on her master’s thesis.

Solène Prince

Solène Prince has worked as researcher and lecturer at Mid-Sweden University and is currently Senior Lecturer in tourism studies at Linnaeus University. Her latest research relates to landscape and narratives in tourism.

Mariana Strzelecka

Marianna Strzelecka is Associate Professor of Tourism Studies at Linnaeus University and an affiliate at Jagiellonian University. Her most recent research is informed by environmental and conservation psychology.