COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse Practicespurpose of this study is to explore whether place attachment directly affects the five dimensions of social wellbeing.Following Hidalgo and Hernández’s (2001), we aimed to consider the influence on social well-being both ofthe attachment to a small-range place, i.e. the neighbourhood, and of the attachment to a larger place, i.e. thecity.Participants were 443 first-year undergraduates attending the University of Turin, a city of about one millioninhabitants in the north west of Italy. The 37.7% of participants were male. Age ranged from 18 to 30 years (mean= 21.43, SD = 3.68). The 77.2 % of the sample came from different parts of Italy and the remaining 22.8% wasgoing to University in the home-town. In the questionnaire the following scales were included: the ResidentialAttachment Scale (Bonaiuto et al., 2002) referred to Turin; the Residential Attachment Scale (Bonaiuto et al.,2002) referred to the neighbourhood of residence; and the Social well-being Scale (Keyes, 1998). All the scalesand the subscales proved acceptable internal consistency.Multiple regression analyses were performed in which every dimension of social well-being was regressed ontodemographical variables (gender, age, and place of origin), city attachment and neighborhood attachment (Table1).City attachment accounted for a large proportion of variance in social integration (β = .23). The affective bondtoward the neighborhood was also a significant predictor (β = .16), in addition to the place of origin (β = -.16).Participants studying in their hometown, in fact, showed a lower level of integration. Concerning socialacceptance, the overall variance explained was lower and place attachment contributed less then before. In thiscase, neighborhood attachment had no influence, while city attachment was a significant predictor (β = .20).Moreover, coming from other parts of Italy increased acceptance (β = -.12), as well as the age (β = .11). Socialcontribution was instead predicted only by one variable: city attachment (β = .17). The link toward theneighborhood and demographical variables had no relevant influence. Gender, age and place of origin did notaffect neither actualization, whereas both city and neighborhood attachment were significant predictors(respectively β = .13 and β = .11). Finally, social coherence was affected by age (β = .10), city attachment (β =.12) and neighborhood attachment (β = -.10). For the last variable, the β coefficient was negative: being attachedto a local area engendered lower levels of coherence.Social integrationPredictor β t pGender (0 = male) -.06 -1.26 n.s.Age .00 .04 n.sPlace of origin: Turin -.16 -3.50 .001City attachment .23 4.85