Place Attachment - Physical Scale

What it measures

Measures the strength of a consumer's emotional bond to the physical attributes of a specific place, such as a retail or service environment. Captures the degree to which the person would feel distress at the prospect of losing access to that physical location, independent of any social connections associated with it. Developed as part of a two-component place attachment framework distinguishing between physical and social dimensions of place bonding.

Scale items

• I can't imagine living without this physical place.
• I feel better if am not away from this physical location for long periods of time.
• If this physical place were permanently gone from my life, I'd be upset.
• Never being able to come here would be distressing to me.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Originally validated in a restaurant context using a community sample (n = 907) but item wording is sufficiently generic for use with other retail and non-retail settings that possess identifiable physical characteristics. Designed and validated alongside the companion Place Attachment - Social Scale (ID 638) as well as the Place Distinction and Place Nostalgia scales from the same paper; these four scales can be administered together as a multi-component sense-of-place battery. Attenuated reliability = .95. AVE = .84, supporting convergent validity. Items use a 7-point Likert format.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Brocato, E.D., Baker, J., & Voorhees, C.M. (2015). Creating consumer attachment to retail service firms through sense of place. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(2), 200-220.

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