Place Bonding for Recreation Places: Conceptual and Empirical Development

Abstract

Place bonding is a common phenomenon in many recreation areas, where people develop an affective and cognitive based attachment to special resource settings. Conceptually, place bonding is fairly well understood; empirically it is less so. In this study, a five dimensional orientation to place bonding of trout anglers for a wild and scenic stream was conceptually and empirically developed. The dimensions of place familiarity, belongingness, identity, dependence, and rootedness were examined by having respondents (n = 203) rate a 26‐item scale of recreation place bonding. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses produced a five‐dimension solution to place bonding. The five‐dimensional model was examined for convergent validity and predictive validity, with the latter predicting 75% of variance in an overall measure of place bonding. Research and management implications are discussed for recreation resource place bonding.

Keywords:

• anglers
• place attachment
• river recreation
• sense of place

Notes

1. The two items eliminated from the original model in order to arrive at an acceptable (fit) model were: ‘I have many memories of trout fishing on the Chattooga’ (familiarity item; = 3.89) and ‘The Chattooga is like a home to me’ (rootedness item; = 2.98).

2. Portions of these data were adapted from another publication.