The Study of Environmental Attributes and Place Attachment - A Case Study of Dapeng Bay Bikeway

[[abstract]]The problems of global warming are now a serious concern in society; therefore, our government is doing her best to fulfill the policy of saving energy and hope that the carbon footprint can be reduced. Encouraging cycling instead of driving can make the policy realized. Our government planned and constructed many bikeway in Taiwan, which offer excellent environmental for people to practice the exercise. Therefore, this research is aiming to understand the cyclists’ relationship between environmental attributes and place attachment. This research is based on questionnaires and simple random sampling. The location chosen for the research is in Dapeng Bay bikeway. The subjects interested are mainly the local residents. The sample size is 230 which are 82.14% of the total sampling. The subjects are mainly married with children; aged 31 to 50 including local residents who don’t have secured income such as retirees, housewives, and students. One of the characters of the bikers using the path is that they go cycling with friends who play the role of informing the bikeway. The second character is that the bikers don’t join any cycling club. They usually ride their bikes for 31 minutes to an hour for at least ten times a month. The differentiation is larger in environmental attributes if the variables are controlled in marriage status, education, riding with companions or not, and riding time. The differentiation is larger in place attachment if the variables are controlled in age, residence, frequency of going biking, the year of practicing biking, riding time, and join the cycling club or not. Another finding is that it shows positive correlative between environmental attributes and place attachment. In other words, if the satisfaction is higher in environmental attributes then it results in higher place attachment, and vice versa. Therefore, it can be concluded that local residence with higher degree of place attachment results in higher satisfying in environmental attributes because the locals usually identify themselves with the location, and depend on it for exercise. Thus they are more likely to use, understand, and enjoy the bikeway