This study explores the relationships between place of residence, living in a threatened place and the subsets of place attachment: place identity and place dependence. Six hundred participants living in south-west Western Australia in rural and urban areas with varying degrees of bushfire risk responded to surveys asking about their reasons for living in their local area, their place attachment and their socio-demographic details.
MANOVAs revealed a significant effect of place of residence on place identity with rural residents reporting higher place identity than urban dwellers. Urban dwellers reported lower place dependence than rural dwellers except when they lived in a fire prone area, in which case their place dependence was on par with that of rural residents.
Socio-demographic predictors of both place identity and place dependence to the home and local area were also explored, these included length of residence, education, and owning one's home.
Previous studies have found that women are more attached to their homes than men . This was not the case in the current study where sex did not predict home place attachment. Sex did, however, predict local area place identity, with females reporting higher place identity than males. This could be because it is often seen as more socially acceptable for women to be sentimental about places, with men being less comfortable expressing their emotions. Women may also be more likely to socialise within their local area as it is often women who take their children to play groups or training/games for local sporting teams. This would make mothers feel that they are part of the local area and could be important to their identities as mothers.
Local area place attachment (both place identity and place dependence) was predicted by people's involvement in local organisations, choosing to live in the area because of its physical attributes and living in the area where one was born.
This supports previous findings that involvement in the local area through clubs, volunteering, neighbourhood ties and local association activities is correlated with place attachment and helps people recognise the importance of their sense of place. People who are more attached are probably more likely to join clubs and people who join clubs are more likely to feel part of their local areas and thus increase their attachment to them.
From the results it would appear that if people move to places because they find them physically appealing they may be more open to forming emotional and functional attachments to that place whereas living in an area because it is close to work or family does not appear to affect the level of attachment to the place. This supports who theorised that people who move to an area for its attributes might rapidly form interpersonal connections and a strong attachment to the place. People who still lived in the place they were born reported higher place attachment; this is in line with Hay's finding that people who lived where they were born reported having a higher sense of place.
