Symbolism, purpose, identity, relation, emotion: Unpacking the SPIREs of sense of place across digital and physical spaces

Abstract

When personal meaning and knowing emerge for a space, that space moves beyond a labeled locale to become a place such that one develops an idiosyncratic knowing or Sense of Place (SoP). Decades of scholarship have animated understandings of SoP for locales, however that work is inconsistent in operationalizing the construct and largely limited to positively valenced, physical spaces. To begin addressing those shortcomings, we (a) synthesize extant scholarship to propose a SPIREs framework for SoP (comprising symbolism, purpose, identity, relation, and emotion dimensions) and (b) conduct a descriptive study of SoP dimensions across physical and digital, positively and negatively valenced spaces. Our analysis induced a hierarchy of complex themes and subthemes for each dimension—findings that point to SoP's conceptual independence from valence and materiality and its likely polythetic structure.