The relationship between sense of place and the subjective quality of life of rural Australians

Attention to the sociophysical context of everyday life has proven to be informative in understanding many aspects of wellbeing. This paper considers the extent to which one's relationship with place, defined as one's geographic residential community, is related to one's perceptions of quality of life. Sense of place is conceptualised as representing the psychological dimensions of person-place relationships, including place identity (cognitive), place attachment (emotive) and place dependence (behavioural. Adults in several rural communities of Queensland Australia completed a survey including the Comprehensive Quality of Life scale (Cummins, 1997) and the Sense of Place survey Qorgensen & Stedman,2001). Findings indicated moderate correlations between the total ComQol score and place attachment (r = .31), identity (.29) and dependence (.33). Investigation of the individual domains of ComQol showed material wellbeing and emotional wellbeing to be most strongly related to all aspects of sense of place, whereas relationship wellbeing was related to attachment and dependence, and community participation to identity. Consideration of the different aspects of sense of place in relation to quality of life are discussed