Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Department of Geography, Faculty of Literature, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Abstract
The sense of belonging to a place is an indicator by which one can measure the degree of distinctiveness of that place for people compared to other places. For this purpose, in the present research, an attempt has been made to investigate and analyze the sense of belonging to a place in rural areas and the factors affecting it. The current research is descriptive-analytical in nature, survey-type in execution, and field-type in terms of data collection method. The area under study is Shusef village, one of the villages of Shusef district, Nehbandan city, South Khorasan province. This village has 56 inhabited villages, of which 15 villages are the basis of the field study. After collecting data and analyzing them based on statistical tests, the findings indicate that the significance level in all three dimensions of the evaluation of the sense of place belonging is less than 0.05 and the average is higher than the median value of 3. Among these dimensions, the identity dimension has the highest average with an average of 3.89. In the variable of factors affecting the sense of place belonging, the results of the average comparison test show the significance and more than the average effect of each of the three dimensions on the sense of place. The results of the regression test show that the level of significance in all the factors affecting the sense of belonging to a place is less than 0.05, which indicates that these factors have a direct impact on the sense of belonging to a place. Among the three factors, the environmental-physical variable or place characteristics with a beta of 0.556 had the greatest impact on the sense of belonging to the place
Highlights
The sense of belonging to a place is an indicator by which one can measure the degree of distinctiveness of that place for people compared to other places. For this purpose, in the present research, an attempt has been made to investigate and analyze the sense of belonging to a place in rural areas and the factors affecting it. The current research is descriptive-analytical in nature, survey-type in execution, and field-type in terms of data collection method. The area under study is Shusef village, one of the villages of Shusef district, Nehbandan city, South Khorasan province. This village has 56 inhabited villages, of which 15 villages are the basis of the field study. After collecting data and analyzing them based on statistical tests, the findings indicate that the significance level in all three dimensions of the evaluation of the sense of place belonging is less than 0.05 and the average is higher than the median value of 3. Among these dimensions, the identity dimension has the highest average with an average of 3.89. In the variable of factors affecting the sense of place belonging, the results of the average comparison test show the significance and more than the average effect of each of the three dimensions on the sense of place. The results of the regression test show that the level of significance in all the factors affecting the sense of belonging to a place is less than 0.05, which indicates that these factors have a direct impact on the sense of belonging to a place. Among the three factors, the environmental-physical variable or place characteristics with a beta of 0.556 had the greatest impact on the sense of belonging to the place
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