Place Attachment as a Function of Meaning Assignment

By interacting with their environments individuals create bonds and links. In the course of this interaction, anonymous spaces are converted into places endowed with meaning, which serve as objects of attachment. Attachment is defined as a construct representing mainly the emotional bond to a location, but which includes also cognitions and meaning, and is related to personality tendencies of the individual. In this study, information processing tendencies of different aspects of place attachment were investigated. Information processing tendencies were defined in terms of the Meaning Theory that deals with identifying cognitive processes involved in the performance of diverse acts and were assessed by means of the Meaning Test. A focus was set on four aspects of place attachment dealing with: preferences for open or closed spaces, grasping place atmospheres, considering the matching of places to actions, and caring about orientation in space. These attitudes were assessed by a Likert-type questionnaire. The participants were 36 architecture students. Associations between place attachment and information processing tendencies were analyzed by t-tests. Results showed significant and meaningful relations between aspects of place attachment and processing tendencies. Implications for environmental design are proposed.