Geospatial Thinking and Sense of Place: The Mediating Role of Creativity

An individual’s sense of place has a motivational impetus on how s/he relates to the place. Thus, environmentally sustainable behaviors are deemed as products of a person’s sense of place. However, little is known about the extent to which geospatial thinking conditions a person’s sense of place. Accordingly, this study builds a theoretical model that examines the influence of geospatial thinking on a person’s sense of place. Further, it investigates the mediating role of creativity. A survey data from 1037 senior high school students in western China was utilized to test the theoretical model. The findings indicate that students’ geospatial thinking has a positive relationship with their creative behaviors and sense of place. Students’ creativity was found to facilitate their sense of place. Moreover, students’ creativity was discovered to mediate the relationship between geospatial thinking and sense of place. These results provide useful implication for the cultivation of students’ sense of place. In this regard, geography education has the critical role in improving students’ geospatial thinking skills to stimulate creative behaviors for a better sense of place.