Sense of Place to Campus amongst Undergraduate Students in USM

Abstract

Campus life is very important for the undergraduate students during their experience. This study explores the undergraduate students–campus relationship in University Sains Malaysia (USM). Using questionnaire survey to 114 respondents and applying SPSS to analyze, the students’ sense of place to campus with three constructs of place dependence, place attachment and place identity is presented. The international and local students’ place identity varied significantly while their place dependence and place attachment showed no significant difference. The students’ sense of place in the three constructs varied significantly by different races. Based on the results in this study and relative literature, this paper proposes that place identity may represent a higher hierarchy of people – place relationship than place dependence and place attachment. KEYWORD: Sense of place; Campus; Place dependence; Place attachment; Place identity International Conference on Social Science, Education Management and Sports Education (SSEMSE 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 184 Place attachment refers to the emotional bonds people develop with places. It “is the emotional link formed by an individual to a physical site that has been given meaning through interaction” (Milligan, 1998, p. 2). It “involves an interplay of affect and emotions, knowledge and beliefs, and behaviors and actions in reference to a place” (Altman & Low, 1992, p. 5). In the seminal paper: The City and Self-Identity, Proshansky (1978) defines place identity as “those dimensions of self that define the individual’s personal identity in relation to the physical environment by means of a complex pattern of conscious and unconscious ideas, beliefs, preferences, feelings, values, goals, and behavioral tendencies and skills relevant to this environment” (p. 155). Jorgensen and Stedman (2001) explore the foundation of sense of place with three dimensions (place attachment, place identity and place dependence) equating with component of attitudes (affect, cognition, and conation). “Place attachment is equated with the affective (or emotional) component of attitude; place identity as the cognitive domain whereby a place is part of the social actor’s sense of self; and, place dependence represents the conative domain of attitude in which the dependence expressed for one’s setting is relative to the behaviors performed there” (p. 237). Scholars point out that the people and place have to be put in a specific context if he want to deeply comprehend and present the people-place relationships. In this paper, the research objective is to investigate the undergraduate students’ sense of place to the campus of USM.