Operationalizing “place immersion” as a spatial neuropsychosocial phenomenon: Development and validation of the Place Immersion Scale (PLIMS)

One's experience of a place can impact their daily behaviour, development, health, aging, and quality of life. An often unexplored influence that may affect such experiences is the potential immersive quality of these person-place interactions. With no measures to quantify such a phenomenon, this study presents the psychometric validation of a novel ‘place immersion’ scale designed to capture the extent to which individuals self-report deep, engrossing, and minimally-interrupted (i.e., immersive) experiences of places. Building on a previous conceptualization paper (Buttazzoni et al., 2022), the resultant Place Immersion Scale (PLIMS) was validated through item pre-test expert evaluations, a within-subjects (n = 244) ecological momentary assessment study of two divergent contemplative environments (noisy road area, quiet lake area), and subsequent dimensionality, validity, and reliability analyses. A three-factor (i.e., neuro-spatial, psycho-spatial, and socio-spatial immersion) scale structure was supported by exploratory factor analyses. Confirmatory factor analyses of the three-factor, 14-item scale suggested good overall construct validity via acceptable levels of convergent (e.g., total scale Average Variance Extracted values > 0.50) and discriminant (e.g., all latent variable covariance upper limits ≤0.80) validity. Reliability analysis indicated each immersion dimension (i.e., factor) can be reliably measured with four to five scale items, and featured strong reliability for the total scale (α = 0.88 in natural space, α = 0.90 in built space). Predictive validity analyses were also conducted using linear mixed models to explore associations with anxiety-present, anxiety-absent, and perceived restorativeness outcomes.