Dimensions of Landscape Stewardship across Europe: Landscape Values, Place Attachment, Awareness, and Personal Responsibility

Abstract

Improved perceptions towards landscape stewardship, at the local level, could help achieve more sustainable futures. However, little research has been done on the dimensions of landscape stewardship underlying such perceptions. Here we look at the perception of landscape values, place attachment, awareness of the adverse consequences human action might have on landscapes, and ascription of personal responsibility across Europe as well as how these dimensions are connected and influenced by personal capabilities and socio-cultural contexts. We conducted a cross-site comparison study, in six European municipalities, using a survey to capture residents' levels of awareness, responsibility, and attachment as derived from a set of statements. Respondents were also asked to indicate the values they perceive in the local landscape from a given list. The data was analysed by combining frequency analysis, factor analysis, and contingency tables. In our sample of 726 respondents, stronger awareness was related to stronger ascription of personal responsibility, but a connection to place attachment was not clear. Perception of multiple landscape values was related to stronger awareness, responsibility, and place attachment. Meanwhile, awareness and responsibility were influenced by respondents' occupation, levels of income and education, and socio-cultural context, whereas place attachment was linked to their relationship to the local area. We conclude that enhancing commitment towards landscape stewardship, at the local level, requires efforts focused on making environmental education more universal, implementing green options accessible to everyone, and people experientially engaging more actively with their local landscapes.

Mapping Adolescents’ Sense of Place and Perceptions of Change in an Urban–Rural Transition Area

“…The adolescents' responses are a direct reflection of this physical separation of urban space and are a clear testament to the increasing focus of activities like sport and shopping in the urban periphery, with the urban core retaining its importance for emotional or aesthetic aspects of the human experience, like historical memory and sense of place and belonging. This finding supports recent calls for broader narratives around cultural heritage that are able to account for these intangible experiences beyond just recreation and tourism (García-Martín et al 2018). Moving away from the idea that "that which has no market value has no value at all" (Díaz-Pacheco and Hewitt 2010) towards new kinds of spatial planning that can accommodate these intangible landscape values is in any case likely to reap wider economic benefits in the long run.…”

“…There is a vast literature, rooted in disciplines ranging from geography and psychology to economics and ethnography, that tries to conceptualize and evaluate human perception of and relation to nature and landscapes. This is pursued, for instance, in terms of sense of place (Jorgensen and Steadman 200;Perez-Ramirez et al 2019), landscape values (García-Martín et al 2018;Stephenson 2008), ecosystem services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2003) or an embodied perspective, which emphasizes the role of experiences and activities such as recreational uses (Raymond et al 2017).…”

The preferences of residents and tourists for culturaland architectural heritage in a rural landscape:The case of Zlatna Greda, Croatia

“…The scope of research on this topic has been explored by numerous scientists from different fields (e.g. Altman and Low, 1992;García-Martín, Plieninger and Bieling, 2018;Giuliani, 2003;Gross and Brown, 2008;Huber and Arnberger, 2015;Lu, Lin and Yeh, 2018;Manzo and Perkins, 2006;Prayag and Del Chiappa, 2016;Ramkissoon, Smith and Weiler, 2013;Scannell and Gifford, 2010;Stefaniak, Bilewicz and Lewicka, 2017), and hence it can be defined as highly interdisciplinary. Altman and Low (1992) conducted a study in which they established different research frames rooted in different disciplines.…”

“…In contrast, García-Martín, Plieninger and Bieling (2018) learned that place attachment is linked to a desire to participate in making decisions about the local landscape. Within the last two decades, there has been an increasing number of studies on place attachment, with many of them using questionnaires to collect data and produce new knowledge (García-Martín, Plieninger and Bieling, 2018;Huber and Arnberger, 2015;Lu, Lin and Yeh, 2018;Prayag and Ryan, 2012;Stefaniak, Bilewicz and Lewicka, 2017). Over the last few years, there has also been an increase in research on place attachment related to tourism (Gross and Brown, 2008;Lu, Lin and Yeh, 2018;Prayag and Del Chiappa, 2016;Prayag and Ryan, 2012;Ram, Björk and Weidenfeld, 2016;Ramkissoon, Smith and Weiler, 2013;Yuksel, Yuksel and Bilim, 2010).…”

Dynamic relationship between landscape and new energy system categories

“…Since the 90s, studies (Garcia-Martin et al 2018;Valles-Planells et al 2014;Mainardi Peron and Falchero 1994) on the perceptual dimension of landscape and human systems have identified four dimensions of perception: cognitive (related to thought, organization and information), affective (linked to emotions and personal feelings), interpretative (related to the extraction of meaning and the creation of idea associations) and evaluative (linked to values and preferences). According to these studies a mental map can be identified (that is the overall picture each person has made for a landscape and/or a city) which is necessarily partial (unable to understand the whole), simplified (because it omits a lot of information), idiosyncratic (every observer is unique) and distorted (based on distances and subjective directions).…”