Conference Agenda

Research on place attachment is important as it is known to help foster social capital and civic participation. It is influenced by living arrangements, the residential context, and resident interaction. Additionally, contact assets, such as children or pets, affect resident interaction and the use of community spaces. However, previous studies have primarily examined the effects of residential context and resident interaction, while the role of contact assets has received limited attention. Their impact across diverse environments is still unclear, necessitating further research. This study examines how the relationship between resident interaction and place attachment varies by residential context and contact assets.

We used questionnaire data from an online survey in Japan (N = 11,002). We applied probabilistic latent semantic analysis to cluster residential contexts, then divided each cluster by the presence or absence of contact assets. Finally, Bayesian network analysis examined how resident interaction and place attachment relate within each divided group.

The results identified four residential contexts, showing that areas with abundant community resources had more residents with place attachment. Across all contexts, greeting others, recognizing faces and names, and having reliable acquaintances consistently correlated with place attachment. For individuals with contact assets, even light social interactions such as greetings contributed to attachment, whereas for those without, recognizing acquaintances by both face and name was crucial. Among those without contact assets, fewer acquaintances were needed in areas with abundant community resources. This study highlights how effective social connections for place attachment vary by community resources and contact assets.

We describe a framework on bridging social capital in humanitarian contexts for inclusive resilience. Bridging social capital denotes social interactions and associations that connect communities, groups, or organisations with socio-spatial inequalities and polarizations. It enables the participants to build trust and maintain channels of communication, potentially influencing several broader dimensions of social cohesion and civic engagement. However, bridging social capital can re-perpetuate inequality and tensions too in humanitarian contexts. If benefits are not shared fairly, certain groups may be compelled to move, and powerful community interests may exert dysfunctional control. Challenges with the availability, accessibility, and activability of resources through social support can push bridging social capital into crisis.

Current concepts highlight what bridging is; they fail to address the various hindrances to, drivers of, and norms for such social processes, thus prolonging resilience building. The concept needs a paradigm shift to what bridging does through extrinsic connectedness, involving the mobilisation of resources for inclusion and empowerment in community interactions and daily experiences.

This article presents an ontological framework encapsulating the logic of bridging social capital. The framework systemically deconstructs the combinatorial complexity of the problem around the dimensions of social and capital and explicates the pathways of social inclusion. The ontology highlights all three drivers of the bridging process—barriers, facilitators, and norms—and is applicable in any heterogeneous society and across diverse humanitarian contexts. It is useful for systematically analysing bridging’s critical linkages for social inclusion, involving participants’ predispositions and aspirations, as well as barriers, norms, and facilitators in their collaborations for resources to develop strategies of inclusive resilience. The framework thus adopts a dynamic concept of a more interactive understanding of social action and inclusion.