Operationalization of place attachment: A consensus proposal

Research into place attachment has increased significantly in recent years, although the main limitations in this area continue to be terminological and conceptual ambiguity and empirical operationalization. These limitations are seriously hampering progress in this field. Consequently, to overcome these obstacles place attachment has been defined and operationalized in terms of affection, identity, dependence, social ties, integration, preference, restorative capacity, quality of place, etc. Often these measurements do not correspond to the definition proposed by authors themselves. Researchers in this field must therefore join forces to halt this proliferation of proposals and attempt to reach a minimum consensus to enable the integration of results obtained in different studies. This study reviews the measures used most often by different authors and proposes a method for reaching a consensus based on the use of these attachment measures and also on the theoretical model proposed by Scannel and Gifford (2010).