The egocentricity and emotionality of sense of place: Scale development and validation across digital/physical and positive/negative locales

Abstract

People increasingly live within and across physical and digital spaces, forming idiosyncratic connections with those locales. Building on extant work indicating cross-materiality Sense of Place (SoP) to be a function of symbolism, purpose, identity, relationality, and emotion (SPIRE), the current study tested the validity of a five-factor SPIRE measure and examined variance as a function of physical (vs. digital) and positive (vs. negative) places. Among cross-national participants (N = 348 from > 30 countries), response patterns forward a two-factor solution: One combines SPIR elements anchored to identity items representing an egocentric orientation toward the place (55% of variance explained), and another comprises only emotion items representing idiosyncratic emotion dynamics (14%). Validation analyses found egocentricity to be strongly and positively associated with metaphorical conceptualizations of SoP, emotionality less so, differentially across place materiality and valence. Findings hold implications for digital and physical space design, especially as generative technologies increasingly afford place personalization.