Place attachment, place identity and residential mobility in undergraduate students

Abstract

This study examines how patterns of residential mobility affect place attachment and identity. In accordance with Hernández, Hidalgo, Salazar-Laplace and Hess (2007), among other contributions which have approached the relationship between these concepts (Knez, 2005; Kyle, Graefe and Manning, 2005; Jorgensen and Stedman, 2001; Lalli, 1992), place attachment is considered an affective bond to a space, and place identity a subcomponent of identity. People frequently live in different cities throughout their lives, even different cities at the same time, dwelling in one city and working in another, or studying in a different city from their weekend or holiday residence in the case of undergraduate students. The main goal of this study is to find out how these patterns of residential mobility affect place identity and attachment, and to contrast the relationship between these two concepts. In order to explore this area, a questionnaire was applied to a sample of 666 undergraduate students in Barcelona (Spain) with different residential mobility patterns to confirm the two-factor structure of the proposed instrument and answer other questions regarding the neighbourhood, city and region of residence during term time. Our results support the hypothesis that residential mobility, in terms of higher or lower mobility regarding the place of residence during term time, affects place attachment and identity differently in the three levels of environment analyzed