Managing human-environment relationships to sustain local market competitiveness - Development and validation of a resident-place relationship model based on brand equity theory

The study of how individuals relate to their living environment has received much attention in the last few decades. In order to enhance people’s relationships with places, authorities and place managers are required to identify how places are relevant to their users and how the perception of place-related aspects can transform into feelings, attitudes and behaviours towards the place. Drawing from brand equity theory, this research aims to provide fresh insights for the marketing and branding of places by identifying place attributes that are valuable to residents across places. The research also seeks to investigate how the perception of such place attributes influences residents’ relationships with places and examines how the personal backgrounds of residents affect person-place relationships. Mixed research methods are used to address these questions. First, semi-structured interviews from the city of Stuttgart and the rural community of Köngen, both located in Germany, are used to explore and compare person-place dimensions. The findings show that cognitive place perceptions, affective person-place relationships and pro-place behaviours are relevant for “resident-based place brand equity”. Based on these domains, a research instrument is developed. Data from resident samples from five German places of different sizes is then used to develop and validate an empirical model with principal components analysis (PCA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the last step, the impacts of respondent backgrounds on different person-place relationship concepts are assessed with analysis of variance (ANOVA) and correlation analysis. The results imply that resident perceptions of valuable place attributes predict person-environment fit, which is related to consumer localism. The research extends the literature by proposing a new measurement tool, developed in a cross-place context, that includes affective and monetary dimensions. Besides, the study demonstrates that especially the degree and length of exposure to a place influences how residents relate to the place.