Place attachment, defined in the literature as the positive emotional bond between individuals and specific locations, has been repeatedly associated with well-being and life satisfaction. Its loss, by contrast, has been linked to anxiety, grief, depression, trauma, and a compromised sense of self-identity. The authors argue that this emotional core has been studied against a backdrop of contemporary pressures—natural disasters, globalisation, migration, weakening social ties, security concerns, and the erosion of distinct place identities—that make the construct more urgent than ever, yet harder to pin down.

The problem the framework targets is partly one of conceptual crowding. Scholars frequently cite constitutive structures such as place identity, place dependence, and place affect, but these terms overlap heavily. Affective attachment, a subtheme of place attachment, is defined as an emotional bond to a place, which closely resembles the broader definition of place attachment itself as emotional bonds with place. Place identity is sometimes equated with emotional attachment outright. Meanwhile, researchers have identified a sprawling list of influential factors, from sociocultural dynamics to personal memories, and the resulting fragmentation, the authors contend, impedes both research and real-world application because competing models fail to capture the realities of diverse populations.

Methodologically, the study combined a scoping literature review with conceptual framework development and iterative refinement. The authors searched Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection, restricting queries to article titles for peer-reviewed English-language journal articles published between 1985 and 2024. After duplicate removal, a September 2024 search yielded 1003 unique records and a September 2026 rerun yielded 1010; the team used the latter as the definitive dataset, treating the rerun as a reproducibility check rather than an update. Title screening excluded 664 records where place attachment was not the central construct or the study did not address its formation or development, and abstract and full-text assessment excluded a further 238, leaving 108 database-derived studies. Backwards and forward citation searching and targeted thematic searches added 22 sources, producing 130 core scoping studies. A second author independently re-screened a random 20 percent sample of titles and abstracts, reaching 90 percent agreement, with a third author resolving disagreements.

For the analytical engine, the team turned to retroductive reasoning rooted in critical realist epistemology. Retroduction moves backwards from a phenomenon to the underlying powers and mechanisms that generate it, aiming to reconstruct the basic conditions that make the phenomenon possible. In practice, the researchers traced the etymological and theoretical roots of constructs such as conation and identity to reveal their multifaceted nature, then organised the resulting distinctions into the matrix. The framework then went through four iterative refinement cycles in which the research team—drawing on architecture, sustainability, and psychology expertise—evaluated each version against theoretical and empirical findings from prior field studies, revising it for conceptual clarity, comprehensiveness, practical applicability, and theoretical coherence. Early versions merged natural and built dimensions under a single physical environment heading; cross-checking against prior work led the team to separate them, and a final iteration split personal factors into personal identity and personal dependence.

The resulting architecture rests on a theoretical claim the authors explicitly endorse: Jorgensen and Stedman’s position that place attachment represents the emotional aspect of attitude, place identity the cognitive domain reflecting how far individuals incorporate a place into their self-concept, and place dependence the conative domain, meaning the place’s capability to facilitate a person’s activities and functions. Conation itself is characterised as the proactive part of motivation that connects knowledge, affect, drives, desires, and instincts to behaviour. Place dependence, in this reading, arises when individuals perceive a location as meaningful and able to meet their functional needs and behavioural goals more effectively than available alternatives, and it is often constrained by a place’s physical characteristics in ways cognitive components are not.

The matrix then crosses these two dimensions with the human and physical environments. On the identity side, subthemes include distinctiveness, continuity, belongingness or rootedness, familiarity, self-efficacy, and self-esteem, elaborated differently for each aspect. Natural environment identity covers the incorporation of nature into one’s self-concept, an idea drawn from Clayton’s environmental identity work, with microclimatic factors such as humidity, temperature, sunshine, and wind shaping perception and memory of a place. Built environment identity operates through symbolic meanings embedded in physical surroundings—historical buildings carrying collective meanings, architectural features and visual signs strengthening attachment to historic neighbourhood centres, and identity-focused place branding such as using urban heritage in festivals. Personal identity includes place-referent continuity, in which places serve as coherent references for past experiences like childhood events and milestones, and place-congruent continuity, the alignment between a place and a person’s current beliefs. Social identity draws on shared traditions, socio-historical events, ethnic and religious commonalities, and feelings of belongingness and collective efficacy.

On the dependence side, the framework catalogues security and safety, support for goals and functions, access to resources and their quality, and feelings of satisfaction, beauty, comfort, health, and control, again differentiated by aspect. Natural environment dependence concerns meeting needs and finding comfort through nature, access to natural resources, and a sense of control over natural factors; the authors cite field evidence that both physical and visual connections with nature correlate with place dependence and with self-reported physical health. Built environment dependence spans orientation and wayfinding support, environmental control, perceived building aesthetics, building density, access to services, higher-quality materials, legibility, safety, transport, meeting places, and venues for cultural events. Personal dependence covers internally sourced feelings of security, satisfaction, comfort, and control, including body-centred processes linking the body to environmental features. Social dependence encompasses practical support from family and friends, social cohesion and trust, access to social services, positive beliefs about governance, and social justice, which one cited study linked to community dependence, trust, security, and subjective well-being.

Empirical grounding for the framework’s components comes from studies the authors added during revision. A survey of 326 students in Piana di Sibari, Italy, found that students more aware of their region’s environmental and cultural history showed stronger place identity and emotional ties. Research with urban residents in Northwest England showed memory dynamically reshaping bonds with place. A study of international students in Southport, Australia, found that participants from India, Iran, China, and Australia displayed culturally distinct attachment patterns despite identical amenities. Work on Indian eateries in Dubai showed culinary spaces fostering cultural ties to migrants’ places of origin, and a study of Hanfu tourism experiences showed traditional clothing practices cultivating self-awareness and national pride that strengthened collective identity and place attachment. Demographic variables including age, gender, income, education, length of residence, and homeownership have been identified as moderators, with length of residence and homeownership flagged as particularly influential.

The authors are careful about what the framework is and is not. They describe it as a heuristic synthesis rather than a definitive model, and they note that iterative validation in their study meant repeated cycles of model refinement and literature-based evaluation, not independent empirical validation or new primary data collection. The framework has not been tested through primary data collection, the dimensions may overlap in lived experience despite being analytically separated, and the scoping review carries language, database, and publication biases from its English-language, title-restricted search, with no formal quality assessment of included studies. Still, the authors see practical uses: diagnosing place attachment strengths and weaknesses before implementation, guiding context-specific interventions in urban, rural, or natural settings, and mitigating project risks by surfacing attachment gaps during early-stage planning. Their illustrative applications range from upgrading infrastructure in historic areas lacking comfort, to designing landmarks and cultural events in modern urban areas with adequate infrastructure but weak identity, to preserving landscapes and creating green corridors for sustainability goals. Future work, they suggest, should employ mixed-methods and longitudinal designs across diverse contexts to test the framework’s predictive utility and refine its indicators.

Subject of Research: A conceptual matrix framework for place attachment developed from a scoping review of place attachment literature

Article Title: "Revisiting place attachment: A matrix framework for strengthening emotional bonds in urban, rural, and natural contexts"

Article References: Parsaei, N., Aliabadi, M., Sharif, H. R., Sheikholeslami, R., & Habibi, A. (2026). "Revisiting place attachment: A matrix framework for strengthening emotional bonds in urban, rural, and natural contexts". Heliyon, 12(16), Article e45603. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45603

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45603

Keywords: place attachment, place identity, place dependence, environmental psychology, scoping review, matrix framework, urban planning, community resilience, built environment, nature connectedness, social bonding, critical realism