Abstract
In order to synthesize the extensively studied place identities and their meanings, this paper reviews how researchers have conceived and deconstructed place identity. CiteSpace, a scientometric tool for visualizing and analyzing trends and patterns in scientific literature, is used to identify the active topics and new developments of publications in place identity. The data set input into CiteSpace consists of 1,011 bibliographic records retrieved from the core database of Web of Science with a title search of the articles published between 1985 and July 2019. The scientometric review reveals the extensive applications of place identity in various topics. Studies in this field experienced an active exploration in plural disciplines after 2000, and the hot area gradually concentrated on the discipline of humanities and social sciences after 2010 and shifted toward place marketing until now. A network of co-cited references identified seven dominant research clusters, of which the research on the influence of place identity on social actors’ attitudes and behaviors is most prominent and the research on the effects of physical environment change on place identity captures the latest emerging area. Versatile meanings of place identity are witnessed in different clusters and articles of a cluster. These meanings are intertwined in shaping the knowledge base of thematic concentrations. To supplement the scientometric analysis, a deep survey on measuring methods and roles of place identity in the contents of academic articles was done to trace knowledge connections between different empirical understandings of place identity. Finally, this paper summarizes the meanings of place identity in four dimensions and in turn offers some suggestions for further research directions.
Highlights
Place identity is a versatile concept upon which many psychological theories of human– environment relations are built (Zimmerbauer et al, 2012; Gieseking et al, 2014)
Another dominant explanation of place identity can be found in most of Paasi’s articles (Paasi, 1986, 1991, 2002c, 2003, 2009a,b). He thought it would be beneficial to distinguish analytically two aspects of place identity, namely, place identity of a place and people’s place identity. The former refers to those features of nature, culture, and people that are used in the discourses and classifications of science, politics, cultural activism, regional marketing, tourism, governance, and political or religious regionalization, to distinguish one place from others
On the base of the bibliographic records in the core data set of Web of Science related to place identity, this paper identified active research topics and new developments in place identity with a scientometric analysis
Summary
Place identity is a versatile concept upon which many psychological theories of human– environment relations are built (Zimmerbauer et al, 2012; Gieseking et al, 2014). Proshansky’s view on place identity has been widely referred to Another dominant explanation of place identity can be found in most of Paasi’s articles (Paasi, 1986, 1991, 2002c, 2003, 2009a,b). He thought it would be beneficial to distinguish analytically two aspects of place identity, namely, place identity of a place and people’s place identity. The former refers to those features of nature, culture, and people that are used in the discourses and classifications of science, politics, cultural activism, regional marketing, tourism, governance, and political or religious regionalization, to distinguish one place from others. The definitions of place identity by early leading scholars, such as Proshansky and Paasi, from different disciplines have influenced the formation of the versatile meanings of place identity to a great extent
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