ABSTRACT

Place attachment, the cognitive-emotional bond that develops between individuals and their important places (Low and Altman 1992), is a common and possibly universal phenomenon (Lewicka 2011). The bonds can emerge with different types of places (e.g. natural or built) at different geographical scales (e.g. a room in a house, a neighborhood, a city, region, or country), and usually become significant through personal experiences or culturally determined meanings (Scannell and Gifford 2010). Given the prevalence of person–place bonds, researchers are further exploring why such bonds exist, how they benefit individuals psychologically, and how they detract from, or contribute to, resilience (Cox and Perry 2011; Cutter et al. 2008).