Augmenting places: The impact of placemaking on behavioral intentions

Despite its undeniable popularity, the concept of placemaking continues to suffer from a lack of clarity, valid performance indicators and robust data to attest of its effectiveness. Still to this day, understanding what placemaking actually does to people and, in turn, makes them want to do, all the while accounting for its contribution separate from other contextual factors, remains both a practical and scientific challenge. Hence, this experimental study investigates the impact of placemaking on affective and cognitive evaluations, self-congruity, and behavioral intentions across five very different built environments. Results show that environments ‘augmented’ through placemaking generate significantly more positive responses, be it in terms of emotions, perceptions, identification, or intended behaviors. In the process, the study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms by which behavioral intentions are induced through placemaking.