ABSTRACT

Social bonds have been a focus in understanding community attachment. Community context is also critical to fostering community attachment. While community context assessed by objective measures such as population size and density has been linked to community attachment, the effects of both objective context and subjective context measured by individuals’ perceptions of community context on attachment to urban communities have not been well understood. Combining the survey data for 26 metropolitan and micropolitan communities in the US. from 2008 to 2010 with the Census Bureau’s data, this study examines how individual characteristics, social bonds, subjective and objective measures of community context affect sentimental attachment to the communities. The results show that positive perceptions of community social and physical environments significantly encourage community attachment, and their effects are stronger than those of objective context measures and social bonds. These findings suggest that community attachment is not necessarily weakened in urban areas.

摘要

社会纽带一直是理解社区依恋的焦点。社区环境对于促进社区依恋也至关重要。虽然通过诸如人口规模和密度之类的客观指标评估的社区环境已与社区依恋联系在一起，但人们对由个人对社区环境的看法所衡量的客观环境和主观环境对依附城市社区的影响并没有得到很好的理解。结合美国26个大城市和小城市社区的调查数据。从2008年到2010年，根据人口普查局的数据，本研究考察了个人特征，社会纽带，社区背景的主观和客观衡量如何影响对社区的情感依恋。结果表明，对社区社会和自然环境的积极认识大大促进了社区的依恋，其效果要比客观情境测量和社会纽带的效果强。这些发现表明，城市地区的社区依恋并不一定会减弱。