Relationship between Sense of Place and Local People’s Behavioral Intentions toward the Conservation of Cultural Heritage Sites: Attitude as a Mediator

Abstract

Recently, there has been a worldwide interest in local people’s engagement in cultural heritage conservation. However, previous research has not yet profoundly examined how the symbolic values, e.g., Sense of Place (SoP) and attitude, held by local people toward cultural heritage sites affect their behavioral intentions toward the conservation of these sites, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. The present study fills in this gap through an empirical examination of local people’s attitude as a mediator of the roles of SoP in behavioral intentions toward two historic buildings at the Al-Khalifa quarter in Historic Cairo, which gain the local people’s special interest in their conservation. Methods included direct observation, review of related literature and conservation reports, semi-structured interviews with local people, officials and managers, and 200+ collected questionnaires from a sample of local people on the two historic buildings. The data analysis revealed that there is a case in which inserting attitude as a mediator variable substantially improves the prediction of people’s behavioral intentions. Accordingly, the study concluded that testing the mediation of attitude is highly recommended when examining the SoP-behavioral intentions roles, as it may improve the prediction of behavioral intentions under certain conditions. This conclusion could be supported by further examination of several historic buildings with similar characteristics and uses. The study suggests using carefully designed questionnaires to avoid the possible bias that might occur because of the order in which the questions and rating values are listed. In general, this study can guide the official stakeholders on how to maintain sustainable conservation of cultural heritage sites through understanding how the local people perceive and react to these sites.