Beyond destinations: Environmental perception and village attachment among stayers, outmigrants and returnees in rural China

Abstract Moving beyond the prior studies on destinations, this study identifies people's perceptions of and attachments to their places of origin to theoretically address how social groups defined by environmental experiences perceive the environment and how these perceptions affect their attachment. Villages in inland China are empirically examined as shared places of origin for stayers, outmigrants and returnees. This study confirms a positive relationship between the frequency and intensity of people‐environment interactions and the levels of environmental perception, as shown by the decreasing perception levels among stayers, returnees and outmigrants. Environmental perception occurs when individuals selectively perceive environmental features that have special meaning to them in meeting their functional needs. Such selectivity leads to differences in the environmental perception variables that significantly affect group attachment. The village attachment of both outmigrants and stayers is significantly affected by their perception of socioeconomic environmental features, while the perception of physical environmental features is only significant for returnees. The strong impact of social environmental features on outmigrants’ level of attachment confirms the rootedness of such attachment to one's place of origin and challenges the belief that mobility and attachment to place are negatively related.