Abstract
Enhancing place attachment in urban green spaces can contribute to residents’ well-being and quality of life. However, traditional scale-based psychometric measures of place attachment fail to identify the settings where place attachment occurs, which largely limits knowledge on the linkages between place attachment and physical characteristics of urban green spaces. The purpose of this study is to propose a spatially explicit measure approach integrating place attachment scale with public participation GIS and explore how physical characteristic indicators of urban green spaces influence residents’ place attachment. Taking five sample urban green spaces in Changchun City of China as examples, we identified the spatial distribution of place attachment based on data from 787 respondents and selected 139 sample sites at more detailed parcel scales to examine the relationship between place attachment and physical characteristics using stepwise regression analysis. The results validated the spatially explicit measure approach in precisely mapping place attachment intensity and showed that place attachment was significantly associated with four dimensions of physical characteristics: site composition, facility, landscape, and spatial configuration. For polygonal sites in urban green spaces, six physical characteristic indicators played a more important role in determining place attachment: total area, tree canopy cover in activity zone, number of recreational facilities, number of formal seatings, visible waterscape elements, and visible historic landscape elements. For linear sites in urban green spaces, five physical characteristic indicators exerted a more important effect in determining place attachment: pathway width, tree canopy cover in the pathway, number of formal seatings, presence of informal seatings, and visible public art installations. These findings provide pertinent guidance for designing and managing urban green spaces to promote place attachment.
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The datasets generated during and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 52408056]; the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province [grant number QC2025E006]; and the Heilongjiang Province Philosophy and Social Science Research Planning Program [grant number 25YSC022].
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HJ: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Resources, Software, Formal analysis, Writing—original draft, Investigation, Funding acquisition. WX: Conceptualization, Writing—review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Validation. WD: Writing—review & editing, Supervision. QD: Writing—review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Validation.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The complete study protocol was reviewed and approved prior to project initiation by the Ethics Committee of Harbin Institute of Technology (Date 03/27/2023; Approval No. 2023091), the corresponding author’s affiliated institution. According to the Guidelines for Ethical Approval at Northeast Forestry University (https://kyy.nefu.edu.cn/info/1031/4934.htm), ethical approval for the finalized manuscript also must be obtained at least 30 working days prior to publication (Part I, Article 1), and the full manuscript must be included as supporting documentation for ethical approval applications (Part I, Article 5). Accordingly, the finalized manuscript was also reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Northeast Forestry University (Date 03/17/2025; Approval No. 2025060), the first author’s affiliated institution.
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This study conducted non-interventional questionnaires research from June 26 to October 15 in 2023. During this period, all participants had been fully informed that their anonymity was assured, there was no risk to them of participating, why the research was being conducted, and how their data would be utilised. All participants were also provided informed consent prior to participation.
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Jiang, H., Xie, W., Dong, W. et al. How do physical characteristic indicators of urban green spaces affect residents’ place attachment: an analysis based on a spatially explicit measure approach. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06850-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06850-8
