Environmental care and place attachment: Perspectives for sustainability in schools

Abstract

The growing interest in research about place attachment, or emotional bonds formed with places, derives from the acknowledgement of the role that these bonds can play in defining personal identity and establishing a sense of belonging to places that encourages pro-environmental behaviors. Situated in this subject field, this work studied the relation between place attachment and environmental care traces. Using instruments of direct observation and environmental assessment, the study observed the conservation status of a school environment in Florianópolis (Brazil). Additionally, the study related conservation status to the attachment to specific sectors of the school by self-administered questionnaire in a collective situation filled out by 508 students. The results showed positive and statistically significant correlations between place attachment and environmental conservation status, as well as statistically significant differences among different types of environments regarding each of these variables

Neighborhood Care and Neighborhood Bonds: An Unequal Relationship

“…First, based on bivariate correlations, we were able to confirm that neighborhood attachment is positively correlated, though only moderately, with neighborhood care. The results are consistent with those obtained by Longhinotti-Felippe and Kuhnen (2012a) for school environment. Our study examined neighborhoods with different socioeconomic characteristics.…”

“…However, despite the large number of studies on attachment to residential place, the role of attachment to urban neighborhoods has rarely been analyzed in terms of its impact on behavior related to caring for and maintaining the neighborhood (neighborhood care). This is confirmed by Longhinotti-Felippe and Kuhnen (2012a), who purport that the focus of the literature has been on the issue of conservation of the natural environment as opposed to the constructed environment. These authors carried out one of the few studies on this topic, focusing on the school environment and analyzing place attachment and caring behavior for different areas within a school (e.g., playgrounds, classrooms, bathrooms) among a sample of adolescents.…”

“…The eight neighborhoods examined in the study were chosen by a group of experts to guarantee the inclusion of different socioeconomic levels, as well as different states of neighborhood maintenance. The criteria considered to qualify neighborhoods as high/low maintenance were based on protocols from the studies by Bonaiuto et al (1999), Hur andNasar (2014), andKuhnen (2012a;2012b); in which features such as physical observational measures (e.g., broken features, graffiti or litter in public areas, perceived physical upkeep, paper or cigarette butts on the ground, respecting green areas) were considered along with other perceptions of physical care of the neighborhood. The neighborhoods were:…”

Place attachment: antecedents and consequences (Antecedentes y consecuencias del apego al lugar)

“…However, the role of place attachment has not yet been analysed in detail in relation to another form of environmental responsibility, which involves caring for and maintaining our built environment, especially the neighbourhoods in which we reside. As Felippe and Kuhnen (2012) state, the literature on this subject has devoted more attention to the problem of natural environmental conservation than to that of the built environment, although some research has been conducted in rural areas and in public spaces. These studies analyse the influence of neighbourhood attachment on the care that residents take of the material conditions of their neighbourhood (maintenance), assuming, in line with Manzo and Perkins (2006) and Perkins and Long (2002), that affective ties with places encourage care of the object of attachment because people are motivated to protect and improve the places that are meaningful to them.…”

A formação da paisagem do Arraial de Perdões no entorno da Picada de Goiás no século XVIII e o tombamento estadual para conservação do seu centro histórico

“…(Santos, 1988apud Bernardes, 2020. capacidade de criar um sentimento no qual se traduz em "vínculo afetivo estabelecido entre pessoas e cenários físicos" (FELIPPE;KUHNEN, 2012, p. 610), no qual a pessoa e o lugar se sentem um só.…”