The study of place has been a component of the recreation literature for about
three decades. Most researchers have sought to either describe the cognitive and
evaluative beliefs (place meaning) recreational visitors ascribe to a setting or identify the
intensity of the human-place bond (place attachment). Few have attempted to
qualitatively investigate the meanings visitors ascribe to a setting and quantitatively
measure the intensity of their attachment to that setting within the same study design.
Nor has there been much work aimed at understanding these concepts in marine
environments.
In this dissertation, I began to fill these gaps in the literature through the use of a
three- phase multiple-method research design. In the first phase, I conducted 20
interviews to identify the meanings that recreational visitors ascribe to the Great Barrier
Reef Marine Park (GBRMP) and to further explore how the symbolic interactionist
framework can be used to understand place meanings. Ten place meaning themes
emerged from the informants' statements. The second phase used 34 items developed from the 10 meaning themes that
emerged from the previous interviews and a place attachment scale to explore how
recreational visitors' attachment to a marine resource was reflected in their depictions of
why the resource is meaningful. Three hundred and twenty-four individuals, living in
Queensland, Australia, responded to a postal/email survey conducted during January and
February of 2009. The results indicated that all the meanings recreational visitors ascribe
to the GBRMP provide context for the attachment they hold for the setting, however
particular sets of meanings are important in differentiating between attachment intensity
levels.
The final phase, which also used the postal/email survey described, identified
how place attachment affected the relationship, identified by Stern et al. (1995), between
the recreational visitors' environmental world view (EWV) and attitudes toward
negative impacts on the reef ecosystem. I found that place attachment partially mediated
the relationship between EWV and attitudes toward impacts. The conclusions presented
in this dissertation filled in gaps in the recreation literature's understanding of place
while providing further insight into how place meaning influences other constructs
important to natural resource management.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-7096 |
| Date | 2009 August 1900 |
| Creators | Wynveen, Christopher J. |
| Contributors | Kyle, Gerard T. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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