A study on the sense of attachment, with a phenomenological view of place: Interpretation of people’s existential experiences

Place and the sense of attachment to a place are among the topics that are considered in this study in which people are shown to have internal relationship with the environment. In fact, the feeling of belonging and attachment to a place play a decisive role in any situation and space, in order to benefit and maintain human presence there. This sense leads to the connection in such a way that man considers himself as a part of the place. The spatial attachment is a relationship of belonging and identity to the environment in which one lives. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to achieve the effective factors in the formation of a sense of attachment, by recognizing the characteristics of the place. This research is qualitative in nature and is conducted with an existential phenomenological approach in which three types of informal (conversational) and semi-structured interviews and in-depth (structured) interviews are used as data tools. Findings show that two categories of factors can be effective in the sense of attachment of residents to the house: external dialectic and factors that are related to the outside of the house (i.e., the quality of the exterior appearance of the house; neighborhood reputation and security) and internal dialectics factors that are related to inside (i.e. ownership; quality of comfort; physical quality of the house; neighborhood satisfaction and positive emotional relationships). These two categories influence the formation of residents' attachment to house i.e. "human-house interaction" and have been identified as the core of research. In the phenomenological approach, the sense of belonging means the inter-relationship between human and the environment, which includes all indicators.