Place Attachment and Healing Environment: A Study on the Relationship Between Positive Emotions and Spatial Types During Campus Closure

Abstract

Creation of healing environment on university campus can enhance college students’ physical and mental well-being. In recent years, the emotional factors of place attachment have attracted more attention among healing environment research. However, the relationship between the spatial characteristics of different healing spaces and the aroused positive emotions remains unclear. This study investigated the places on the Siping Road Campus of Tongji University that college students most wanted to visit during campus closure and the expected activities and imagined feelings via questionnaires and interviews. Through data analysis with IBM SPSS, this study identified five clusters of positive emotions on university campus—joy, serenity, hope, pride, and interest, mapping them as well as corresponding activities with spatial types and facilities on the campus, and the healing environment spaces were divided into five types: landscape space, sports space, third space, learning space, and living space. Furtherly the interview texts were coded via MAXQNA software, from which representative themes were selected to investigate the differences of positive emotion clusters in each space type. Finally, the study proposes that promoting positive emotions through place-making is an important way to create a healing environment. The findings of this study provide a reference for planning, design, and intervention measures of healing environment on university campus.