An Analysis of Influential Factors in Developing a Sense of Place Attachment (Case Study: Tajrish Bazaar)

Today, the lack of attention to the human and place components and the dependence of the life of contemporary commercial centers on economic conditions have caused the following issues: a decrease in individual presence, the lack of customer loyalty, loss of place attachment, and absence of people in shopping centers; which adversely influenced the continuity of these urban centers. Therefore, identifying and discovering those factors that improve attachment to bazaar space can contribute to improving emotional and spiritual conditions for urban residents, and increasing the efficiency of commercial centers.

This study aims to find the influential factors playing a role in developing a sense of a place attachment to the bazaar and to achieve the relationship between the effective components in the Tajrish Bazaar as the research objective.

To achieve the goals of the research, a combination of qualitative-quantitative methods was used, and the effectiveness of factors on place attachment was examined through the causal-comparative strategy. Throughout the process, the theories on place attachment and factors affecting this sense of dependency were first gathered through document-based and bibliographic research methods. Next, relying on the results of the content analysis, the conceptual model of the research was proposed. According to the data obtained from the qualitative phase, a questionnaire developed by the researcher was distributed among the participants including shopkeepers, customers, and passers-by in Tajrish Bazaar. The data was then analyzed through the statistical tests of SPSS 26.

The results revealed that place, human, and time components are among those influential components in creating a sense of place attachment, and there was a significant relationship between these factors and place attachment. The data analyses showed that, among the place components, the place physical factors, and, among the human components, the perceptual factors were the most effective ones in creating a sense of attachment to the bazaar. Memorability and identity were among the perceptual factors that had the most significant relationship with the place and among the place physical factors, accessibility with the highest effect, and form and structure accordingly were the next significant factors.