An investigation on the effects of individual factors in process-oriented study of place attachment with a cognitive psychological approach (Case study: The Gharebaghi's neighborhood of Tabriz)

Human’s weakened bond to residential areas, compromised identity and stability of residents in residential areas, have resulted in higher rate of transfer. Nowadays, following the loss of importance, the texture of neighborhoods has lost its relation with in the perception of the human living in it and has confronted him with a serious crisis of identity. In this regard, place attachment and cognitive issues are among the most important factors in overcoming these problems and environmental sustainability. Place attachment is an urban space quality and yet it has a form of product-based output, it needs to pay a serious attention to stages and process of place attachment. Hence, extraction of factors involved in the formation of place attachment and applying them in future designs is a prerequisite for fulfillment of needs and realizing goals through the place. In analyzing the process, it is important to apply relevant sciences to process of human cognition and relationship between human and environment. Since as part of a broader and wider field of cognitive science, cognitive psychology deals with relationship between human intellectual processes and environment, understanding cognitive structures and new methods of research in this field will provide designers with valuable information.
The aim of research is to investigate the effects of individual factors in process-oriented study of place attachment with a cognitive psychological approach. Research with the presupposition that each of the individual factors differently affects the realization of attachment and the effectiveness rate of each on the attachment process is discussable, seeks to answer the question: "How and to what extent the individual factors affect the process-oriented study of place attachment with a cognitive psychological approach?".
Given that the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of individual factors on the place attachment process and in this process individual's understanding of the environment is examined, a specific neighborhood in Tabriz (The Gharebaghi's neighborhood) with purposeful sampling was chosen as the case study to minimize cultural and social variables affecting the attachment process, the constancy of local variables and focusing on the cognitive elements of individuals. Research is a combination of qualitative (interview) and quantitative (questionnaire). In order to determine the appropriate number of participants, first a pretest was performed as a pilot study on 40 residents of the neighborhood and after the estimation of variance for the initial sample (S2) at the confidence level of 95%, the number of the sample was increased to 297.
Results indicate that individual characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, work status, housing status, stability, traffic and walk duration have a significant relationship with the three dimensions of attachment process (emotion, cognition and behavior). Education is the only variable that does not interact significantly with the cognition dimension of the attachment process. Achievement of this research is to introduce the effective individual factors on enhancement of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of place attachment process and effectiveness rate of each in this process.