The Role of Place Attachment in Developing Emotional Solidarity With Residents

Abstract

As the body of work concerning emotional solidarity between residents and tourists continues to grow within the tourism literature, little focus has been placed on how the setting factors into such relationships. Using the Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove (a UNESCO World Heritage Site in southwestern Nigeria) as a study site, this research examines the role visitors' attachment to the place plays in explaining their perceived solidarity with area residents. From confirmatory factor analysis, a measurement model was established, which revealed strong psychometric properties for the two place attachment factors (i.e., place identity and place dependence) and the three emotional solidarity factors (i.e., feeling welcomed, emotional closeness, and sympathetic understanding). Structural equation modeling demonstrated that each of the place attachment factors explained a high degree of variance (e.g., R 2 ranging between 45% and 54%) in visitors' emotional solidarity with residents. Implications and future research opportunities are offered within the close of the article.

Destination loyalty explained through place attachment, destination familiarity and destination image

“…whereas Ramkissoon, Smith, and Weiler (2013) conceptualized place attachment as comprising four dimensions: place dependence, place identity, place affect and social bonding. The vast majority of previous studies, however, have concentrated on place bonds developed by local residents while minimal attention has been given to attachment developed by tourists (Prayag & Ryan, 2012;Ramkissoon et al, 2013;Woosnam, Aleshinloye, Strzelecka, & Erul, 2018). Tsai (2012) suggests that tourists themselves also develop emotional relationships with places they visit, and formulate some form of place attachment, which in this case, denotes feelings of bonding and connection visitors develop towards a tourist destination (Stylos et al, 2017).…”

Measuring Tourists’ Emotional Solidarity with One Another—A Modification of the Emotional Solidarity Scale

“…Since then, extensive efforts have been made to test the validity and the reliability of the ESS (e.g., Ribeiro et al 2018; Woosnam 2011a, 2011b, 2012; Woosnam and Aleshinloye 2013), and the scale has been found appropriate in measuring emotional solidarity of both residents (Woosnam 2011b, 2012) and tourists (Woosnam and Aleshinloye 2013; Woosnam, Dudensing, and Walker 2015; Woosnam et al 2015) within the United States. More recently, studies outside of the United States, in nations like Cape Verde (Ribeiro et al 2018), Japan (Woosnam, Maruyama, and Boley 2016), Macau (Lai and Hitchcock 2017; Li and Wan 2017), Malaysia (Hasani, Moghavvemi, and Hamzah 2016), Nigeria (Woosnam, Aleshinloye, and Maruyama 2016; Woosnam et al 2016), and South Korea (Joo, Cho, and Woosnam 2019), have demonstrated the cross-cultural applicability of the scale as well.…”

“…Apart from shared beliefs, shared behaviors, and interaction, studies have identified other constructs predicting emotional solidarity. Frequently, individuals’ attachment to a destination has been found to be positively related to emotional solidarity with others (Li and Wan 2017; Woosnam et al 2014; Woosnam et al 2016). For instance, in Woosnam et al’s (2014) study, residents’ length of residence successfully predicted their emotional closeness and sympathetic understanding experienced with tourists.…”

“…Li and Wan (2017) considered how residents’ community attachment was related to their emotional solidarity and confirmed a positive relationship between the two. Likewise, tourists with greater place attachment to a UNESCO World Heritage Site demonstrated stronger emotional solidarity toward residents (Woosnam et al 2016). Other predictors of emotional solidarity that have been considered so far include the travel distance (Joo et al 2017) or effectiveness of the safety force (Simpson and Simpson 2017).…”

Modeling Key Selected Multisensory Dimensions on Place Satisfaction and Place Attachment Among Tourists in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

“…As far as tourism actors are concerned, individuals are possibly connected to the built tourist 'location', or make sense of location alongside other geographical scales (Schilar & Keskitalo, 2018). Connections, or bonds, between people and sites are conceived as site attachments (Line et al, 2018;McDowell, 2018;Woosnam et al, 2018). Previous studies have demonstrated place importance in predicting revisit behaviour or behavioural intent (Lee et al, 2012;Loureiro, 2014) and how place attachment mechanisms play a different role in terms of tourism decision-making (Kil et al, 2012;Lee et al, 2012;Prayag & Ryan, 2012).…”