Comparison of Place Bonding Models in Recreation Resource Management

Conceptual studies of place bonding have often stopped short of verifying the relationship of scales/models to other relevant recreation behavior variables. The current paper addresses this concern by comparing three models (full, parsimonious, and partial models) of place bonding and their scale measurement to a dependent variable, experience use history (EUH), for degree of predictive validity. Results reveal that the full and parsimonious place bonding models predicted more EUH variance than the partial model. Because the parsimonious model's fit and psychometric properties were as good as the full model, the parsimonious model is recommended over the other models. The parsimonious scale provides researchers with a robust and nuanced measure of people's attachment to place.