Analysis of the Emotional Identification Mechanism of Campus Edible Landscape from the Perspective of Emotional Geography: An Empirical Study of a Chinese University Town

Against the background of “the emotional turn” in geography, the study of emotional identification is attracting increasing attention among researchers. Edible landscape resources can satisfy the emotional needs of teachers and students by enabling them to experience pastoral landscapes that carry cultural and landscape values to campus environments. Based on a questionnaire survey of 419 students and teachers at Chenggong University Town in China, this study improved the structural equation modeling (SEM) method to construct a model to analyze the emotional identification mechanism of the campus edible landscape. The research found that emotional identification played an intermediary role between perception and behavioral intention, manifested as an association mechanism in which surface values influence perception, perception influences emotional identification, and emotional identification influences behavioral intention. The emotional identification model revealed the relationship between teachers and students’ emotional identification and the value of campus edible landscape resources for the first time. It also uncovered the universality of the association mechanism in the research of emotional geography.