Place Attachment Expressed by Hosts and Guests Visiting Friends and Relatives and Implications for Sustainability

Abstract

Based on the consensus that visiting friends and relatives (VFR) contributes to sustainable regions by developing place attachment, this qualitative study shows how VFR hosts and visitors express place attachment, and how this is formed and modified. This paper is based on interviews with a total of 16 hosts and guests who had tourism experiences together in South Korea (Korea). The findings describe the place attachment formation and transition processes of both the hosts and the guests. For hosts, extant place attachment and VFR hosting experience affected each other. Hosts especially expressed that the opportunity to explore new places contributed to redefining the relationship between themselves and Korea, which affected place attachment. Among the guests, VFR visits of Koreans living abroad and non-Korean guests appeared to have different mechanisms for place attachment formation, enhancement, and recovery. Cognitive, affective, and conative realms of place attachment were captured within narratives that expressed refreshment, recharged energy, and relaxation. The interactions between the host and guest affected place attachment, as did the experience of revisiting familiar places and local non-touristic experiences during the visit. Such perceptions and experiences of place attachment development further suggest the role of place attachment building through VFR in attaining the sustainability of a destination region. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by enhancing the nuanced understanding of how place attachment is expressed in the VFR context and by discovering the context of the formation and change of place attachment of diverse hosts and guests. The study is also significant in that it advances knowledge about how place attachment facilitates the sustainability of the regions through the lens of VFR.

1. Introduction

Visiting friends and relatives (VFR) is normally understood as a type of mobility that is triggered by a pre-established relationship between the host and the guest [1]. This type of mobility is influenced by a familiar host and focuses on the personal interaction of the host and guest [1]. The impacts of this mobility are acknowledged to be not confined to personal relationships between the hosts and the guests but to involve wider motivations and experiences regarding the surrounding environment, represented as the place [2,3]. Such people–people interactions, as well as people–place interactions, have implications for regional sustainability [4,5,6].

Studies have observed the impacts of VFR on host–guest relationships as well as on the relevant places, including the tourism destination, the tourist-originating region, and the third place where the hosts and the guest meet and travel together [7,8], through the lens of sustainability [9]. The concepts of social capital [10] or, more comprehensively, community capital [9] have been the tools that have been used to explain such impacts. The focus of such studies has been on the impacts on the people and the community, but the nuanced understanding of how this type of mobility affects places and, further, regional sustainability, has been limited. Structured conceptual examination of impacts tends to focus on social and community impacts, by emphasizing the connection between the hosts and guests while the economic and natural environmental impacts tend to focus on the impacts on the tourism destination. Because of this, despite the notion that VFR involves a (re)connection with a people and a place [3,9], there is still limited understanding regarding how and why people perceive their relationship with their place as a result of the VFR experience and how such people–place relationships affect the region’s sustainability.

One of the viewpoints in understanding the connection between a person and the place in the VFR context is place attachment. Until recently, studies have captured the phenomenon of diverse types of visiting and place attachment in tourism [11] as well as its linkage to the sustainability of a tourism destination [9]. In VFR, the focus has mostly been on the visits of immigrants [12]. While it is expected that the process by which place attachment is formed varies across different VFR hosts and guests, there is still a lack of studies that capture such a diverse mechanism of place attachment formation and contribution to sustainable regions.

This study tries to capture such research gaps and examines how VFR hosts and guests form place attachment through the VFR experience and how the perceptual and behavioral process implies the sustainability of the destination region. Considering the extant notion that VFR activities contribute to sustainable regions [1,9] and sustainable tourism [7,9,13] and the notion that place attachment has implications for sustainable tourism destinations [5,6,14,15], this study enables a deeper understanding of the mechanism of VFR and place attachment that facilitates the sustainability of the regions in the context of both hosts and guests. This study is crucial in adding insights into the extant knowledge about the linkage of place attachment and sustainable tourism [5,6,14,15] by revealing new aspects of how the hosts and the guests help attain the sustainability of tourism destinations.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Place Attachment and Regional Sustainability

Place attachment has been defined in various fields, and the research on place attachment has contributed to academic discussions on how this concept can be used to explain sustainable behaviors of residents and of sustainable regions [16,17,18,19]. Anthropologically, the term place attachment has focused on the symbolic interactions of a people who share culture and give meaning to a place based on their shared culture [20]. Environmental psychology and geography emphasize a person’s bond to a particular place and a sense of distinction that the particular place can provide [21], while ‘giving meaning’ to the environment is still a common aspect in defining place attachment [22].

The dimensionality and scope of place attachment can vary depending on which aspects are focused on. Place attachment can be interpreted by focusing on the person, the social relations, and/or the surrounding environment [21]. Additionally, while attachment itself strongly connotes emotional bonding, place attachment has been conceptualized more widely, incorporating cognitive, affective, and conative dimensions [23]. For instance, as shown in Figure 1, Chen and Dwyer [23] incorporated all realms of place attachment, including the cognitive, affective, and conative components. Raymond et al. [24] followed Trentelman’s [25] analysis of the research traditions that can be classified into three: (1) socio-cultural views; (2) biophysical views that focus on a place as an environmental setting; and (3) a combination of the two. From this perspective, biophysical views emphasize place identity and place dependence. Raymond et al. [24] conceptualized place identity and place dependence as the realm that captures an individual’s attachment to a place. Many others have acknowledged place identity as closely related to place attachment [26].

Place identity refers to “a sub-structure of the self-identity of the person consisting of, broadly conceived, cognition about the physical world in which the individual lives” [27], p. 59, as cited by [24]. It is conceptualized with the ‘symbolic connections’ to the place [24], and the extent to which a person’s identity is perceived or interpreted to match the physical environment is important from this perspective [28]. Applying social identity theory, individuals categorize themselves based on a place in a similar manner to social identification. Thus, individuals define their membership based on how they define themselves associated with their place.

Place dependence is conceptualized as a functional connection between a person and a place. If one has place dependence on a place, this means that the place provides elements to support one’s life [24] or that the place provides a setting that enables one’s particular activities [28]. Many scholars understand place dependence as a conative dimension of place attachment and have attempted to capture a person’s behavioral aspects in relation to a place [23,28].

Recent studies have examined how social and nature bonding can be linked to place identity and place dependence [24]. The role of community or society is highlighted in capturing place attachment related to social bonding. Concepts such as community attachment, social bonding, belongingness, a sense of membership, rootedness, familiarity, and emotional connection regarding shared history and culture explain such a realm. A sense of belonging refers to a sense of membership in the place. Place rootedness refers to a strong emotional connection to a place as home. In considering this realm, the rootedness and lineage, or the genealogical aspect of place attachment [29], can be linked to the affective realm of place attachment concerning the past, per Chen and Dwyer [23], or to the notions of place memory [30]. Social attachment [31] and social ties emphasized in the domain of social bonding have been linked to affective attachment by Chen and Dwyer [23]. It is also notable that the sense of connectedness to nature—nature bonding—is considered a core realm of place attachment [29].

In addition to social and nature bonding, there is the term affective attachment, which denotes an emotional bond with a place [28]. Studies, such as that of Swapan et al. [32], use the term ‘place affect’ (person–place bonding) and differentiate the term from social bonding (person–person bonding).

Place attachment has been adopted in research as a proxy for regional sustainability. This line of research has two streams: sustainability studies in terms of environmental protection as outcomes of place attachment that people have [16,17] and sustainable built environment, green space in urban areas, and society and culture attained through place attachment [18,19,33]. The former stream of studies has used pro-environment behaviors as outcomes of place attachment, based on the consensus that pro-environment behaviors facilitate sustainable natural resource usage [16,17]. For instance, Salehi and Bijani [16] focused on farmers’ tendencies to use groundwater sustainably by utilizing two components of place attachment—place dependence and place identity—as predictors. Halpenny [17] have showed that place attachment can predict the pro-environment behaviors of park visitors, while pro-environment behaviors are identified as a way to maintain sustainable usage of the environment. The latter stream of studies has explored the role of place attachment as a way to facilitate citizen participation in cities [18] or has studied place attachment by assuming that it forms a sustainable urban lifestyle and sustainable cities [19,33]. For instance, a smart city study by Jaššo and Petríková [18] showed the role of urban gardening in enhancing the sustainability of urban regions through the residents’ enhanced place attachment. An empirical study of Greater Tokyo by Dasgupta, et al. [19] explored place attachment to urban green space, assuming roles of the residents’ place attachment in the community’s sustainable behaviors for urban life and development. António Joaquim Araújo de, et al. [33] considered place attachment as an agent by which to facilitate the sustained quality of life and happiness of the residents as well as sustainable and inclusive regional development. In sum, extant studies have applied place attachment as a useful indicator by which to predict individuals’ and the community’s sustainable behaviors and their contribution to sustainable urban development. Such discussions have become increasingly engaged with by tourism academics and this will be reviewed in the next section.

2.2. Place Attachment and Its Contribution to Sustainable Tourism Destinations

The literature shows that many place attachment studies have focused on the residents and did not seriously differentiate the realm of place attachment applicable to the residents who are not rooted in a place [34]. In the tourism context, especially among tourists, place attachment is still believed to be formed without having to have continuous and rooted interactions between a person and a place. Based on such a consensus on the applicability of place attachment in the tourism context, research has explored its linkage to sustainable tourism [35].

One highlighted aspect in understanding place attachment in tourism is that person-to-person interaction shapes core aspects of the tourism experience which involve the person–place interactions [11]. Similar to other place attachment studies, place identity and place dependence have been the focus of the conceptualization [35]. Studies have also recognized the importance of capturing the affective dimension and thus some, such as Yuksel et al. [28], used the three-dimensional structures of place dependence, place identity, and affective attachment. The way that a tourist has an attachment to the place can be different from that of a resident. For instance, regarding place identity, when Yuksel et al. [28] applied the dimension to a tourist’s context, they explained that this dimension of attachment can be developed because what a destination symbolizes is symbolically connected to tourists and can be perceived as a good place for spending holidays.

Place attachment has been quantitatively analyzed in many tourism studies to capture the antecedents and consequences. The concepts that have been examined to support the relationship include tour-guiding competence [36], socioeconomic impact [37], life satisfaction and quality of life [37], behavioral intention and decision making [38,39,40,41], and specifically pro-environmental behavior [6] or more widely, destination loyalty [42,43], destination branding [44], perceived authenticity [40,45], tourist experience [35] or memorable tourism experience [46], and consumption emotions [41], among others.

Such extant knowledge, especially that has examined the outcomes of place attachment, has supported the role of place attachment on sustainable tourism destinations. For instance, Pai, et al. [37] have argued that positive socioeconomic impacts and life satisfaction attained through place attachment are variables with which to contribute to the sustainability of a tourism destination. Similar to general studies on individuals’ pro-environment behaviors [16,17], studies that have tested the linkage of place attachment and pro-environment behaviors of tourists have emphasized the contribution of the tourists’ place attachment to attaining the environmental sustainability of the tourism destination [6]. Behavioral intentions as outcomes of place attachment have been acknowledged as the contributing factor to destination sustainability because those with place attachment are likely to sustainably support the destination by revisiting and word-of-mouth [38]. In addition, Han, et al. [39] have argued that tourists’ continuous relationship with the tourism destination through revisits indicates the sustainable support on the part of the tourists, which contributes to sustainable destination management. Similarly, Patwardhan, et al. [42] focused on place attachment and loyalty in the context of religious festivals based on the consensus that they directly or indirectly contribute to sustainable planning and management of the festival. Extant knowledge about the place attachment of VFR hosts and guests and its contribution to sustainable destinations is reviewed in the following section, with research gaps being identified.

2.3. Place Attachment in Visiting Friends and Relatives Tourism and Its Contribution to Sustainability

Extant studies on VFR have only partly focused on place attachment as the motivation for a visit, its outcomes, or how it is formed or changed through the experiences. The mainstream consensus among researchers regarding the linkage of place attachment and VFR hosting is that the stronger the place attachment, the more likely that individuals are willing to host [47,48], recommend their place of residence [49], attract guests to visit, and show ‘ambassadorship behaviors’ in general [8]. The mechanism that such outcomes contribute to sustainable destinations is similar to generic tourism settings, which implies that the spectrum of supporting behaviors, ranging from word of mouth and rehosting of guests, enables the sustained relationship between the actors of VFR and the destination region, which in turn contributes to sustainable tourism destination management.

In this process, Wang et al. [49] are in line with general insights into place attachment formation when they emphasize that, by combining place attachment theory and social distance theory and with a combination of place–people attachment and people–people connection, oral supporting behaviors on the part of the hosts of the destination are yielded. Lai et al.’s study [48] provides implications in describing how residents are likely to be willing to be VFR hosts when their place identity, which is partly explained by place attachment, is enhanced, and that variation, such as in the length of residence, also exists in the mechanism for developing a place identity that leads to a willingness to recommend their place of residence as destination ambassadors. Another stream of research focusing on the impacts of VFR on hosts’ place attachment highlights the way in which the hosting experience enables the hosts to be engaged in a leisure experience in their place of residence [50], which can facilitate the enhancement of place attachment [51]. Such research outcomes imply diverse mechanisms by which place attachment contributes to sustainable destinations—not only in terms of facilitating continuous visits of guests but also in terms of the residents’ own enhanced place attachment to the destination, which leads to diverse supporting behaviors of the hosts toward the region they host.

The mainstream research associated with place attachment in this form of tourism from the visitors’ position has been associated with the diverse types of VFR tourists and their varying degrees and attributes of place attachment with the places they visit, such as is the case of diaspora tourists [52]. Studies have also reported that migrants’ visit to their home, which involves visiting friends and relatives at home, involves experiencing and reaffirming their original identities or experiencing the changes that have taken place in their home [53,54]. In examining how visiting home affects a sense of place and partly of place attachment among diasporic tourists, Li and McKercher [53] classified the associated patterns into five—re-affirmative, quest, reconnected, distanced, and detached. In their related study, Li and McKercher [54] additionally reported how place attachment functions when returning home and people’s differentiated visiting patterns. Similar to the case of hosts, the impacts of place attachment formed and developed through VFR for visitors in terms of a sustainable destination could be found through support for the destination through positive word of mouth and revisits. However, extant studies still show a limited understanding of the linkage of VFR to sustainable tourism destinations, especially facilitated by the place attachment of the hosts and the guests. Some impact studies that highlighted the sociocultural outcomes of VFR, such as that of Griffin [9] or of Hung, et al. [10], have shown the contribution of VFR to sustainable destinations and societies through social capital building. Other studies have highlighted the economic contribution of VFR considering factors such as the size and expenditures of VFR visitors [55]. However, many such studies have not been undertaken with a consideration of place attachment. Very few, such as that of Griffin [56], focused on place attachment in VFR, and Choi and Jang [7] linked place attachment to sustainability in their argument. Even so, with the consensus on the contribution of place attachment to sustainable destinations, there remains limited understanding regarding specifically which aspects of place attachment are expressed by the hosts and guests as well as how such VFR experiences imply sustainable destinations. This study fills in the gap by exploring the patterns in which place attachment is expressed by the hosts and guests and seeking the implications of place attachment formed in the VFR context for sustainable destinations.

3. Materials and Methods

This study is drawn from qualitative interviews with informants who were either a host or a guest and who had hosted or visited Korea and interacted with guests. Among the interview participants, host interviewees were recruited by spreading promotional messages online. Facebook communities, LinkedIn groups, and Instagram were the main platforms to spread the recruiting information. Guest interviewees were recruited using the host interviewees’ personal network. Specifically, the host interviewees introduced the guest interviewees whom they had recently hosted in Korea.

This research conformed to the ethics requirements and acquired institutional ethics approval. The interviewers were informed of the purpose of the study as well as how the interview data were stored and analyzed. The interviews were anonymized and thus interviewee numbers (e.g., Host1, Guest1) instead of real names were assigned.

This was part of a larger project that involved interviews with 60 hosts and guests. In the wider project, the interviews involved the interviewees’ comprehensive descriptions of the VFR experiences and perceptions. Most of the interviews lasted from thirty minutes to two hours, and the data analysis that involved coding was based on the transcribed narratives managed with NVivo 14 software. Based on the literature review, the authors identified place attachment as a category during the coding process. Themes were generated based on the examination of the interview scripts relevant to place attachment and the coding of repeated narratives across different interviewees. While the study is underpinned by relativist ontological assumptions and constructionist epistemologies in which the assumption that a single truth exists is rejected, the credibility and the transparency in the process of data analysis [57], especially coding and the interpretation of the interview data, were ensured through a discussion between the two authors and follow-up interactions with the interviewees to clarify their narratives.

In determining the sample size, we followed Braun and Clarke’s [58] suggestion to utilize the narratives from the sample, which can demonstrate the phenomenon. The themes that were identified about the research topic for this study—place attachment—were from the narratives of 16 of the interviewees. The demographic characteristics of the interviewees for this study are summarized in

Table 1. Demographic characteristics of the interviewees.

	N	%
Age group
21–25	5	31.25
26–30	3	18.75
31–35	2	12.50
36–40	3	18.75
41–45	0	0.00
46–50	1	6.25
51–55	2	12.50
Gender
Female	10	62.50
Male	6	37.50
Country of origin
Belgium	1	6.25
Greece	1	6.25
China	1	6.25
Korea	9	56.25
Malta	1	6.25
Pakistan	1	6.25
Turkey	1	6.25
USA	1	6.25
Occupation
Student	5	31.25
Non-student	11	68.75
Highest level of education completed
Secondary school	6	37.50
Undergraduate	6	37.50
Master’s	2	12.50
Ph.D.	2	12.50
Total	16	100.00

.

4. Findings

Both the hosts and the guests expressed the formation and change of place attachment associated with their hosting and visiting experiences.

4.1. Hosts’ Place Attachment and Its Impacts on the Sustainable Destination in the Context of Hosting

4.1.1. Hosts’ Place Attachment in the Context of Hosting and Impacts on Sustainability

Hosts’ narratives reflected that their place attachment motivated them to desire guests to visit and experience their place of residence. Many hosts expressed their cognitive perception and affective bonding about Korea. Depending on their varying degrees of experiences in Korea, the aspects of personal connection to the place varied. Host2, an adoptee in the United States who moved to the country where she was born, was the type of interviewee who expressed that she likes being in Korea based on the cognitive evaluations of the country and did not hesitate to also express negative aspects of it.

I think public places are very clean, including the bathrooms. Um, unfortunately, I think the countryside is kind of dirty. Like, I’m not used to that, in comparison to the United States. I wish there was more space here. I’m used to more space from the United States. I think people tend to be very kind. Foods are rather expensive, like fruit, meat, and stuff… Um, I’m very happy to be here. I think it’s very pretty. I think the language is beautiful… yeah, I like it.

Her narrative supports the idea that this cognitive evaluation and her existence “got people to come here from another country”. Among foreign hosts, those who expressed emotional attachment strongly and rather directly showed how their place attachment leads to active hosting.

Host1, an international scholar with nine years of living experience said that Korea was “my second home”, appreciating that “Korea has given me a lot of experience, education, everything”. Arising from such an appreciation was his expressed his desire that many other foreigners visit.

Korea has given me a lot of experience, education, everything. So, this is like my second home. I want many people to come here and explore Korea, and when they go back, they have good memories of Korea.

Place attachment of foreign hosts involved narratives of increasing conation—place dependence—regarding Korea, represented as the willingness to extend their stay and be more engaged with the society by pursuing studies or finding a job. Host3, a Hongkonger with 3.5 years of experience in Korea as an undergraduate student, strongly expressed place attachment by stating the willingness to deepen place dependence with Korea:

I’m thinking of two ways. One is going to grad school. One is getting a job, because I want to get an F-visa [i.e., F-2 or F-5, (pre)permanent residency] in Korea. But … if you wanna get an F-visa, actually if you graduate from ‘Daehagwon’ [i.e., graduate school], then you can apply for the F-visa like, directly. You don’t have to wait, but if you get a job. You need to hold the working visa for, like, three years to get the F-visa. So, I’m still thinking.

All such hosts, who expressed place attachment through hosting, acknowledged their contribution to the sustainability of the host society, both economically and socially. Host1 was self-conscious about the importance of the tourism industry in national economies and considered himself a contributor to the Korean economy:

If I am hosting somebody, and when they come here, they also bring some dollars and other currencies. So, it is also bringing some amount of money into Korea. And this is also a way of our contribution [to the Korean economy].

Host1 was also self-conscious about the linkage effect of his hosting, enhanced by the word-of-mouth that his guests spread, by expressing the “chain” effect that he triggers:

They (the guests) go back to their countries, and they inspire many other people. “Oh, I enjoyed Korea a lot, so you should also visit”. So, when they (my guests) come here (to Korea), others can also come, and more and more people will come, like a chain.

Similarly, Host3 herself was an active communicator, who persuaded their friends and family to visit or revisit Korea. She did not hesitate to show pictures of Korea to others, which triggered friends and family not only to visit Korea but also specifically to be attracted to certain places in Korea. For instance, when she showed her mother the pictures of her visiting Busan, she reported that her mother reacted, “Oh, I want to go there as well. If I have a chance to come to Korea, I will definitely go to Busan”. “Because it’s like when she saw my pictures, we went to so many places, that, it’s like new places in Busan. Or like, new places in Seoul. She wants to come to Korea too”. Similarly to Host1, Host3’s place attachment led to the self-consciousness of her contribution to the economy of the destination region: “Because they (the guests) come to visit., In Korea, they spend money”.

4.1.2. Hosts’ Place Attachment as Outcomes of Hosting and Impacts on Sustainability

Narratives also show that place attachment was boosted through the hosting experience. Host5, from Malta, discovered “attractive” and “special” places in and outside of Seoul and started to desire that more tourists visit places other than Seoul, the capital city. She expressed that the attachments have “become deeper, definitely” after the hosting experience. Host6, a Korean national who spent most of her life abroad and returned to Korea for her college education, expressed the willingness to have more conative place attachment after hosting, explaining that hosting provided additional opportunities to travel to Korea:

Before I came to Korea for college, I rarely traveled in Korea, but this time, when my family came to visit, I went once a month or my parents asked me to go, so we traveled together and I got to know those places that I didn’t know… I found out that there are so many things to see and play in Korea… and I think it was more fun to travel together while seeing the food that represents that region of Korea or some stories that have been passed down before.

Such hosting experiences enabled her to be involved and be dependent on Korea, reflecting their willingness to increase conative place attachment to Korea, which further shows potential to contribute to the sustainability of the destination’s society. She added the following:

Originally, I didn’t think much about it, but since I’ve been traveling so much, I think I’ve been thinking that I want to go to more places together and that it would be nice to live in Korea.

Other narratives that suggest repeated hosting intention and planning further suggest the host’s potential contribution to destination sustainability. Host4 was conscious about the potential to host others, such as an older sister: “If she meets me, she is almost always with my family, so maybe I’ll host her then”.

For the attainment of regional sustainability, Korea needs citizens who are willing to voluntarily contribute to the country. Host7’s intention to contribute to society after hosting illustrates how such a mechanism is achieved through VFR. For Host7, a Korean who spent his childhood years in Vietnam, the contribution of the hosting experience was strong enough to prompt them to want to be involved in the country conatively by joining the military service. He expressed the following:

I’m someone who didn’t like Korea that much originally, but it’s gotten so much better, to the point where I was willing to join the military, and I did because I see so many positive things about it. Also, first of all, I always see Korea through my own eyes and now that I’m an adult and I’ve had so many good experiences, they tell me a lot of good things that I didn’t see when I saw Korea through their eyes. For example, convenience or fast delivery and there are so many other things and now I always think about that when I was hosting abroad and I was living in Korea and then I was living abroad and then I was living as an adult and it’s a little different, so from there, I realized the advantages of my country and I realized it while talking to them when they came, so I think I got attached to it. I just realized that my country is so good.

4.2. Guests’ Place Attachment about Visiting and Its Impacts on the Destination Sustainability

4.2.1. The Role of People–People Interaction That Facilitates Place Attachment

People-to-people interaction appeared to have contributed to the building of place attachment. Guest6, a foreign visitor, emphasized the following:

I think, if I came alone to Korea, it would be just another destination. But having been with the hosts and friends, I think it became more of a personal connection and it sparked more curiosity. It sparked more of an interest in the place.

As many visitors’ main motivations and activities involved interactions with family, their narratives reflect the way in which the visitors tended to link ‘being at home’ through the interactions with family and friends. Guest3’s narrative reflects how place attachment is reflected as a connection to home and how such a connection is due to the family linkage.

It’s always nice to see my family. I cannot see my family forever. I feel thankful enough that I can visit Korea and see my mother while she is alive. She is still connected to my emotions towards my hometown. My mother and my hometown are the source of appreciation for me. That’s why I’m so emotional.

Guest4 also emphasized the sense of belonging through conversation with family members, especially with those she cannot communicate with easily online and with whom she feels more attached.

I converse more frequently with my immediate family… However, in the case of my two grandmothers, cannot use messaging apps… and we only occasionally talk on the phone, usually when my parents visit them and arrange a call. When we meet, I provide a lot of updates about how I’ve been and also listen to their updates… After these conversations, I feel more intimate because we share stories we couldn’t share before. I often feel alone as I live abroad without any immediate family members, but that feeling tends to fade whenever I visit Korea. I always feel better and have a greater sense of belonging.

Guest4 emphasized the importance of the existence of a family host in the home country in enhancing familiarity and a sense of security, which eventually boosted place attachment to home through the visiting experience: “If my parents lived in another country instead of Korea, I think I would have felt more like travel as I mentioned earlier. But since the host is in the country where I was born, I don’t think I could have felt the stability that the host gives”.

Such people-to-people interactions lead to the behavioral intention of revisiting and rehosting which is triggered by the personal relationship. Different from leisure tourism, where revisit intention is driven by the desire to experience the destination repeatedly, some of the interviewees’ expression of revisit intention shows that such intention was strongly driven by the desire to meet the hosts again. This shows that the emotional bonds built through people-to-people interaction lead to sustained bonds with the people in the destination, which was also suggested by Griffin [9] and Hung, et al. [10]. This mechanism thus suggests social and community capital built through personal interactions during VFR, which in turn contribute to the sustainability of the VFR destination.

4.2.2. Affective Attachment

The VFR return visitors from Korea expressed being “emotional” when explaining their feelings during the visit. It seems that a VFR visit triggers emotions in the context of a place (which in this case is Korea as a destination), and will contribute to boosting place attachment. The following statement represents how affective attachment, directly and indirectly, contributes to the mechanisms for place attachment formation, enhancement, and recovery.

When you go to Korea, it feels very different. It’s more like being moved emotionally, and you want to share the feelings. Everyday life is more about funny or sad things. So, when you go to Korea, you have these emotions because you see something you’d missed or something very different from what you knew, so you get surprised. It’s more about these emotions or impressions.

Guest3’s narrative also reflects how affective attachment is reflected through the emotional connection to family: “My mother and my hometown are the source of appreciation for me. That’s why I’m so emotional”. Furthermore, the narratives indicating the tendency to “be at home” with family and friends, to have “felt like home”, to be “spending time together”, and to be “visiting places together”, attributed to the affective attachments developed for guests.

Given that previous literature shows the roles of affective attachment in contributing to destination sustainability [39], the affective attachment revealed in this study is expected to positively contribute to the sustainability of the destination.

4.2.3. Local, Non-Touristic Experiences Facilitating Place Attachment

Firstly, interaction with familiar people appeared to have contributed to the building of place attachment, which led to the happiness of the guests and eventually helped the sustainability of the destination. Guest1 compared his sojourn in Korea with his current life in Australia, emphasizing that being together with people they felt close to contributed to enhanced place attachment, repeatedly expressing that he “felt like home” when he was in Korea: “…because of the close people, I felt like I was at home. I mean, it wasn’t a big deal, the language or culture”. Furthermore, he expressed that he has “happy” memories through such interactions with the local hosts and the experience in Korea. This echoes previous studies that emphasized life satisfaction through place attachment, which eventually contributes to a sustainable destination [37].

VFR experiences often involved intensive local rather than touristic experiences, and some visitors expressed a stronger desire to mingle with the local life, which appeared to facilitate place attachment for guests. Guest2 illustrated such an instance:

I feel like I belong here than that I’m just visiting some country and moving on. And it feels more like home? I don’t have to see every tourist attraction because I think I want to understand more about Korean culture. And kind of, blend with people.

Secondly, spatially, the visits of overseas Koreans who had lived in Korea for a long time tended to involve familiar and typical experiences during VFR. Guest4 recalled her recent visit to her Korean hometown, explaining that she focused on familiar experiences that enhanced her psychological stability.

I would have had some unusual experiences in an unfamiliar tourist destination, but when I visited my hometown in Korea, I didn’t have any unusual experiences that I hadn’t had before. I was very familiar with the people, places, and my mother’s food—the things I cannot buy while living here [in the United States] even if I pay for it. I feel like I’ve received a lot more psychological stability and came back this time.

Such a trait of place attachment built through local experiences has implications for sustainable destinations, echoing the impacts of “new tourists” or “new urban tourists” who are likely to respect the local culture and prefer to experience the local community and the interactions with the local people and thus to facilitate a sustainable culture [59] and the sustainable development [60] of the tourism destination.

4.2.4. Place Memory

Firstly, the types of guests who previously spent time together with a host in Korea were reported to express place attachment formed through their previous memories of Korea (interacting with other people). This was reflected in both the observation by the host and expressed directly in the guests’ narratives. Host4 explained some of his foreign guests’ place attachments originating from place memory—time spent together in Korea:

I met people while doing IFCC (International Friendship & Culture Club) activities together at the university in the past… Now all are back in their country, but they often talk about wanting to go to Gyeonggi-do when I DM [direct message] on Korean Instagram. I think it’s a memory of the old days. It seems that they miss the moment because they have the affection and memories they felt in Korea in the past.

Host4’s narrative shows that he, as a host, senses that her guests’ place attachment originates from the memory of experiences together at different layers of places—the university, Gyeonggi-do, and Korea. This can be linked to Lewicka’s [61] insights into place attachment to different geographical scales.

Secondly, place memory can be aroused by once again feeling the ‘familiar past’ at home. Guest4’s experience of going back to her own ‘room’, which had remained unchanged, exemplifies such a memory.

Although I’ve been away from Korea for a long time, my room is still the same as the one I used in middle and high school at home. So, I felt like I really came back to ‘my house’. I am moving once every two or three years to the country I live in, so I can’t think of it as my heart’s hometown or home yet. So, when I go to that space, the room I used during my school days is almost preserved as it is, and there are old pictures, and when I go there, I feel like I’m going back to that time, and it gives me a lot of stability psychologically.

4.2.5. Place Identification

The guests appeared to have a notion of place identification by reconfirming their membership in the social network. It is remarkable to note that the notion of place identification may be spatially dynamic. For instance, Guest3 expressed emotional attachment more in illustrating place attachment with ‘home’ or ‘hometown’ but emphasized more functional identification at the country level, emphasizing her Korean identity and citizenship. VFR tourism involves witnessing the progress of the home country and feeling proud of it.

I intentionally didn’t change my Korean nationality after moving to Germany. Because it’s where I am from, where I grew up, and where I as a person was formed. Even if I change my citizenship, I can’t be a person from that country… So, for me, my relationship with my country is in progress. Whenever I visit Korea, I witness the development of my country so much… I feel ‘recharged’ to see the progress of the country, which is similar to a sense of recharge when I feel at ‘home’ in my hometown. I feel glad to have a sense of pride… and I am fascinated to tell others about the development of Korea after returning from visiting home.

Such results echo those of Rollero [26], who emphasized place identification as one important aspect of identity which involves self-categorization based on individuals’ self-defined membership of a social group. In addition, Rollero [26], who defined place attachment and place identification as related concepts, has supported a stronger linkage between social relationship and place attachment than social relationship and place identification. A VFR to one’s hometown involved, for these guests, the experience of reconfirming their membership to the home society by reconnecting with friends and family. Considering extant knowledge that place identification leads to behavioral intention, which in turn contributes to the sustainable development of the tourism destination [39,42], the place identification expressed by the hosts shows the potential sustainability of the destination.

4.2.6. The Dynamics of Feeling ‘At Home’ and Feeling ‘Energy Recharged’

Place attachment involves a sense of feeling at home or of a place being a second home for the guests, as was also found among the hosts. Many interviewees mentioned feeling at “home” during the visit. Some activities that can enable them to feel “at home”, including eating Korean food for Korean visitors living overseas, such as Guest7, enabled them to feel they “recharge their energy” during the VFR experience.

Guest7, a Korean living in the United States, expressed feeling at home with the keywords ‘comfortable’ and ‘no need to worry’. “The best thing about visiting Korea is having a place to stay comfortably. When you don’t have a host, you have to worry about accommodation. Staying with family or at my sibling’s place allows me to not worry about accommodation”. She also directly used the expression ‘recharge’. “I gain a lot of energy while being in Korea. I want to see my friends and family, enjoy delicious food, and recharge myself to continue my life as a foreign student. That’s why I try to visit Korea once a year”.

Similarly, Guest9, who has been living in the United States for an extended period, emphasized how comfortable she felt whenever she visited Korea. She explained that the scope of experience can be extended when she can speak in her mother tongue and is familiar with the culture.

I learned a lot since I came to the United States that the ability to communicate language determines a person’s scope of experience and how one can feel comfortable. I tend to get stressed out when I feel I shouldn’t make mistakes abroad. On the other hand, it’s so convenient to go to Korea because I can understand everything and quickly notice and solve problems without taking out a dictionary. I started to feel I don’t want to go to another [a third] country more since I came to America than when I was in Korea. It is because I feel uncomfortable when I can’t communicate. It feels like my available scope of experience in the United States is narrower than when I was in Korea.

Such a sense of being at home through recharging might be prevalent among those who have moved abroad relatively recently. Guest3, a Korean immigrant in Germany, illustrates the dynamics of visiting home regarding “recharging energy” and being away from stress:

I used to think of my hometown as a place where I could get my energy recharged. So, when I had a hard time abroad and when I needed consolation, I thought ‘If I go home, I feel I can get some energy and feel I will be able to do things better [after the recharge] when I am back here [Germany]”. Home used to be always the source of energy recharge.

However, she illustrated that such a sense of recharging the life energy for the return visitors of immigrant Koreans might become weaker as they settle down in the new place abroad. Guest3 married and settled down in Germany. She explained that, as time goes by, she has settled down and has earned life energy in Germany as well, and the meaning of home is the place to feel thankful:

Now that I have a family… I’ve already accumulated more energy [in Germany] than my hometown. There’s not much that my hometown can give me anymore… so, I don’t need the emotional support of my hometown anymore. But now my home remains an object of appreciation. I am thankful. I was able to accumulate a lot of experience by having a good time at home. It’s firmly established as an object of appreciation.

4.2.7. Future Expectations

Interestingly, the Korean guests who did not intend to settle down in Korea in the long run still valued every VFR experience and showed they tried hard to build an attachment to Korea during the visit. Guest8, a Korean living abroad, is one such example:

I don’t have any intention of settling down in Korea in the future. So, every time I visit, I think this is the last time. I think, “This must be the last place I’m coming to”, and that gives me a stronger attachment. So, even when I go with my friends, I try to remember each moment and take many photos to capture as much as possible.

4.2.8. Place Attachment, Behavioral Intention, and Implications for Sustainability

Finally, many guests’ narratives about the place attachment built through the visits often led them to express their strong intention to revisit, to meet the hosts, to meet more diverse hosts, to accompany more diverse guests, or to experience the destination more diversely. Guest3’s expression of the desired activities during the revisit to Korea exemplifies such a willingness:

Actually, I want to take my husband and children to a small island in the South. For example, Haenam Ttangkkeut Village… It is quiet, calm, and authentically natural. I wanted to travel with them to such hidden places in Korea, but I haven’t done it yet. But I’m going to do it someday.

5. Discussion

The main aim of this qualitative study was to show the process and context of the formation and change of place attachment, with a focus on the VFR experience, and to explore the impact of place attachment of VFR hosts and guests on the sustainability of the tourism destination. The results comprehensively show the constructive role of host–guest interactions in the formation and transition process of place attachment. This study shows how VFR experiences involve a process whereby the tourism space becomes a place. Interviewees expressed the way in which the hosts give new meanings to a place through the hosting experience, how the guests experience the space becoming a place through the VFR experience, or how both parties give meaning to the place changes. The process might proceed differently for the host and the guest. Additionally—and drawn from previous studies that have explored the implications for sustainable tourism destinations triggered by the place attachment of residents, immigrants, and tourists and enhanced by socioeconomic impact [37], life satisfaction and quality of life [37], behavioral intention [6,38,39,40,41] and destination loyalty [42,43]—this study further explored how place attachment, shaped by the hosts and the guests during a VFR, has implications for sustainability. The approaches in this investigation were differentiated from other studies that linked place attachment and sustainability, in general and in tourism, because the mechanism was specifically examined by each category and aspect of place attachment. Furthermore, the uniqueness of the way place attachment plays its role in the VFR context was highlighted in the qualitative inquiry.

Findings show that the hosts’ place attachment and the VFR experience affect each other, and that their place attachment led to a sustainable destination, especially because place attachment triggered them to keep and to deepen their connection to the destination, led them to attract visitors continuously and diversely, and led them to be more conatively involved with the destination. The hosts’ cognitive and affective connection to the place triggered them to actively host the guests, and to desire guests to visit. However, this depends on their varying degree of connection. Host2’s narrative shows that cognitive aspects of place attachment triggered her to host the guests. Host1 indicates that, also for a foreigner, affective attachment facilitates not only the tendency to stay longer, but also to present active hosting. Likewise, combining two theories in their study, Wang et al. [49] focused on the importance of place–people attachment and people–people connections in terms of the supporting behaviors of the hosts. Additionally, our findings suggest the enhanced experiences of the host after hosting. This was indicated through the willingness to deepen place attachment, and in the way in which their hosting provided a feeling of conative place attachment. Such a feeling of place attachment seems to contribute to future intentions to contribute to a sustainable region, echoing previous studies that link the behavioral intention of residents to sustainability [16,17,18,19,33]. This is because the degree to which a host is likely to recommend their place and is willing to host in general depends on their level of place attachment [47,48,49].

Academic and practical understanding of the process of building place attachment for VFR guests, and its implications for destination sustainability, have been limited in previous studies. The findings from this study enable a nuanced understanding of how place attachment is enhanced for guests and how it contributes to destination sustainability. It is important to note that, in addition to a guest’s interaction with a place, person-to-person interaction plays an important role in building, forming, and recovering place attachment. Such person-to-person interaction uniquely triggers behavioral intention and contributes to the sustainability of a destination. The main mechanism behind this is continuous triggering of revisits to a destination, stabilizing visitor inflow. The findings also imply the role of VFR as the opportunity for personal union in enhancing social capital, echoing Griffin [9] and Hung, et al. [10], which contributes to a sustainable destination.

This finding suggests the way in which a place attachment that is developed among VFR visitors would be differentiated from that of other types of visitors because interactions with the hosts meaningfully affect place attachment. Results indicate the factors that trigger such formation of place attachment for guests in the context of a VFR, which comprise “being together, being at home, having a source of appreciation (hometown) and the sense of belonging”. Hence, having a family host contributes not only to an enhanced feeling of familiarity but also contributes to a sense of security; both play a role in boosting place attachment. The results are compliant with the function of place attachment, which is to encourage people to return home [54] and to contribute to the place attachment procedure in which migrants experience their original identity [53]. Furthermore, affective attachment, enhanced psychological stability, and a feeling of having one’s energy recharged highlight the relationship between VFR and place attachment. The results also explain the notion that place identification is an aspect of identity [26], as this mechanism of place attachment for guests was shown to be the result of a reconfirmation of membership in a specific social network.

Notably, the way and the extent to which different categories and aspects of place attachment of the VFR guests were associated with the sustainability of a destination varied. For instance, the people-to-people interactions, affective attachment, and place identification of the guests showed clear implications for the sustainability of a destination. On the other hand, the narratives did not explicitly suggest how the place memory, a sense of feeling at home, feeling recharged, and future expectations led to the sustainability of the destination. Furthermore, the traits of VFR guests’ non-touristic experiences and the need to feel a destination differently from other traditional tourists implied unique ways of place attachment building—through person-to-person interactions as well as person-to-local area interactions—and had additional implications for sustainability in the way that they contribute to sustainability in a similar manner to the ways “new tourists” or “new urban tourists” play their role—avoiding crowded touristy areas, respecting the locals, and by being more conscious about the sustainability of a destination during a visit by reducing their impact on the destination [59,60].

In sum, the results highlight the way in which VFR as a type of tourism mobility fuels the engine of place attachment and clarify how and why people perceive their relationship with a place in the context of VFR. The qualitative results support previous quantitative studies that have shown that place attachment leads to behavioral intention and decision making [38,39,40,41] that could lead to the sustainability of a region. For instance, the theme of ‘future expectation’ explains how guests’ attitudes about their visit contribute to their short visit or stronger attachment, which is clearly in line with the notion that place attachment and a memorable tourism experience impact behavioral intentions [40]. While the result specifically highlights the roles of interactions between the host and guest and how they contribute to place attachment, it is generally in line with Chen and Dwyer’s dimensionality of place attachment [23]. The presented qualitative results are likely to be compliant with three different behavioral dimensions and time dimensions of their model (Figure 1) [23]. Hence, our study adds insights to Chen and Dwyer’s dimensionality of place attachment in the context of VFR experience.

More importantly, this study enables a nuanced understanding of the process of place attachment building in VFR that enables people’s sense of belonging to a region in a way that is known to facilitate the sustainability of that region. Findings from this study add knowledge to the extant literature that has shown the impact of place attachment on sustainable tourism [9,14,15,62] by providing new insights. Specifically, this study not only supports studies, such as that of Griffin [9], that highlight the contribution of VFR to sustainability from the community capital perspective, but has also revealed that place attachment plays a role by enabling individuals to be connected to a place in various aspects that can lead to diverse ways of sustainably visiting a region and supporting that region in ways that help to attain its sustainability.

6. Limitation and Future Research

It is important to note that this research represents a first step in proposing qualitative insights into the formation of place attachment in the context of VFR tourism. However, there are several important limitations to this study that will need to be taken into account in research aimed at exploring the relationship between place attachment and VFR further.

First, a number of additional variables probably influence the perceptions of respondents, specifically those factors that were not taken into consideration in the relationship between visitors and locals. Due to the aim of this study, a harmonious relationship was presented between visitors and hosts. However, further studies might address the potential problems [63]. Exploring the potential determinant factors and their relative influences falls outside the scope of this paper but would be important for further verification of the proposed relationship between place attachment and VFR visits. Given the variety of socio-economic and cultural variables that interact within tourism, it would be unrealistic to assume that many direct cause–effect relationships exist. Hence, it will be essential to identify additional, interrelated indicators and to explore their influences in other social and cultural contexts.

Second, considering the nature of the study, a wider scope of place attachment could be captured if the focus of the future study could be widened to incorporate related concepts that can capture negative place attachment or a lack of place attachment [34] as well as the formation, development, and dynamics of place attachment that were captured in this study. Considering this, examining various methods, including ethnographic research, focus group interviews, or analyzing documents could enhance a nuanced understanding of place attachment among diverse individuals. Interviews with the hosts and guests with more diverse backgrounds could enrich the understanding of place attachment in the VFR context.

Finally, this study was limited to one sample community, either Koreans or those who have experienced living in Korea. Future research, if feasible, should include more communities in the sample and the relationship could be tested in and among different countries.

Future studies can be conducted by applying the newly identified concepts related to place attachment, such as refreshment, recharging, psychological stability, and feeling comfortable and familiar, as well as the interactional variables, to quantitatively examine the mechanisms for place attachment formation and its dynamics.

7. Conclusions

This study revealed how place attachment is expressed in a VFR context and its implications for sustainable regions, which has been less explored in terms of the travel context and methodological approaches. Furthermore, this finding contributes to the formation and changes of ‘place attachment’ as a concept in the context of the VFR experience and implies the role of place attachment in attaining sustainability. Accordingly, people-to-people interactions were shown to be effective for both hosts’ and guests’ perceptions of place attachment, implying the facilitating impact of personal interactions in enhancing the bonds of people with a place and implying a people’s individual and collective support to a place that contributes to the sustainability of that place.