The purpose of this study was to explore how volunteers engaged in natural-area based projects develop attachments to the resource and act as stewards for these resources. The context of this study was the National Park Service's All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) project. This project recruits citizen scientist volunteers to go out into the field with scientists to help collect and catalogue species in the park in an attempt to generate an all inclusive species inventory. Using data collected during indepth interviews and notes taken from participant observations, this study found ATBI participants' motivations to volunteer in the project were multifaceted and included (a) an attachment to the park, (b) an attachment to specific species, (c) the social bonds to other volunteers, (d) the bioblitz experience itself, (e) and/or the opportunity to learn about the natural environment. Analysis of the data also found volunteer informants had personal, well defined meanings attached to the resource prior to the inception of the ATBI project. Through participation in the ATBI project, however, the resource was experienced in a new way, with new meanings emerging while other established meanings were refined. It was found that these established, emerging, and refined meanings formed the foundation of the informants' attachments to the ATBI resource(s), which in turn became the basis for their stewardship of their respective parks, as well as feelings of stewardship for natural areas beyond park boundaries.

Project (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Project (Dept. of Gerontology) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S. in architecture)--Washington State University, May 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Apr. 5, 2010). "School of Architecture and Construction Management." Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-82).

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed July 30, 2009) "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in rural sociology, Dept. of Rural Economy". Includes bibliographical references.

Attributable to the legacy of modernism, within the Western world there exists a widespread and as-yet unresolved sense of detachment from place; our contemporary, globalized condition has given rise to a visually-biased, alienating architecture lacking in meaningful, human connections to site or context, relying all too often upon the abstract projections of the distant and objective architect rather than on the realities of needs and experience. Whilst the field of environmental psychology (within which the topic of place has been widely researched) has suggested theoretical solutions, few practical methods for the translation of relevant findings into strategies for the generation of place and attachment have been developed. Following a literature review, this thesis identifies two key place-related theories which address the characteristics and psychological impact of the physical environment (Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan, 1995) and Canter’s place theory (1977)); in binding these theories to architectural practice, the author offers a strategy capable of aiding the successful understanding and creation of place. Providing an architectural brief to which this study responds, the practice-based element of this research focuses upon the context of North Lands Creative Glass, in Lybster, Caithness. Through a personal account of the impact of place and its manifestation within the author’s works in glass, mixed media and on paper, this thesis proceeds to promote an honest, haptic narrative between the architect and the realities of context and experience; in doing so, it illustrates how an architecture conducive to a sense of place and attachment could be understood and created successfully.

The study topic of public participation is recently transferred from politics issue to living topic. The level of participation will depend on several factors: regional emotion, participation level and the social background. This study investigates the influences of the university campus place attachment and public participation relations of local user by studying the open and regional properties of the National Cheng Kung University. Four research purposes are investigated: (1) the place attachment of different local user; (2) the difference of public participation between different local users; (3) the relationships between place attachment and public participation and (4) providing some specific suggestions to the government for future space design. This study is carried out by collecting the well designed questionnaire and the campus users are chosen as the test subject. A questionnaire retrieved rate of 373/400 is achieved by the period of 2011 March 19th through 2011 April 10th and the data is further analyzed by using Windows SPSS 17 statistic analysis software, and consequently the assumptions can be verified clearly. The factor analysis indicates that place attachment includes four aspects: (1) user function satisfied; (2) lifestyle conformation; (3) emotion growing and (4) safe environment. And another four aspects are defined in public participation: (1) non-participation; (2) spirit participation; (3) Action participation and (4) leading participation. Further conclusions are specified as: (1) users with different social background lead significant difference in place attachment; (2) users with different social background cause significant difference in public participation; (3) significant difference in relationships between place attachment and public participation. Non participation shows negative correlation between the four aspects of place attachment. However, tokenism participation and citizen power participation indicate positive and significant correlation relation with place attachment and (4) regression analysis shows significant relation between the aspects of user function satisfied and leading participation in place attachment. However, not only the aspects of user function satisfied and leading participation but also safe environment are indicated to be significant relation in denizen place attachment. In this way, this study suggests the government regional participation planer should not only strengthen the user dependence and identification to local place but also encourage the democracy, planer and the government to work together for constructing the safe environment and hence increasing the people participation volition. Furthermore, we can find the key regional civilization by professional field investigation to have good realization about the need of the regional user and consequently increasing the people participation. Finally, we may be able to further link the place attachment and public participation by professional participation design to distinguish different local users and hence produce different plan for different regional users.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the connection between people and the hill of Bennachie in the Garioch region of North-East Scotland. The scholarly aim is to complete an inter-disciplinary study in Folkloristics and Anthropology and to enhance ethnological method with landscape theory. The methodology for the fieldwork involved a mix of qualitative research carried out through participant observation and oral history interviews. Whilst the focus of the interviews was on a core group of community volunteers, fieldwork ranged from solitary walking to group participation. Midway through the fieldwork an archival survey was commissioned and this information was used to complement the fieldwork and introduce a collaborative perspective. With a dual methodological focus the thesis approached community relationships with landscape through diverse routes: personal narrative; poetry; the dynamics of community woodland groups, and the interpretation and management of a twentieth century farm ruin. These appear to be very different scales of analysis, yet each topic was heavily influenced by the legacy of land change and clearance in Scotland during the Agricultural Improvements. Each element is related to landscape physically, particularly through walking, and are individual and group performances that generate and reproduce moral values. The principal conclusion is that relationships between people and land in North-East Scotland have been misrepresented through a historic and scholarly legacy of dispossession. Coupled with this misrepresentation is the continuing belief in the North-East that farm lifestyles and dialect is dead or dying. This thesis underlines an alignment between Improvement and antifeudalistic discourse with walking and looking in Scotland. It demonstrates the continuing primacy of landscape and language through looking at, walking on and writing about Bennachie. Landscape attachment is exemplified in these performances and demonstrates a strong co-constitutive relationship between the ‘Lan and the Fowk'.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 18, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 42-47).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2011. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-169). Also available on the World Wide Web.