Quantifying Attachment to Abandoned Villages in Jordan: A Pilot Survey of Connected Residents with Evidence of Empirical Fusion Between Place and Memory

This pilot study quantified perceptions of abandoned vernacular villages (Khirbeh) among 359 purposively sampled Jordanian residents with active ancestral ties. Results showed strongly positive perceptions overall (grand mean = 1.666 on a 5-point scale where 1 = strong agreement), with ceiling effects (23% “all 1s”) indicating limited scale granularity. A four-factor model (Cultural Heritage, Place & Space [PS], Social Memory [SM], Community Identity [CI]) achieved acceptable global fit (CFI = 0.915, RMSEA = 0.065) but failed to demonstrate discriminant validity: PS and SM were empirically indistinguishable (r = 0.80; √AVE < intercorrelation), so the model is not supported. PS and SM together explained 52.6% of CI variance, but unique contributions were uninterpretable due to multicollinearity (VIFs = 2.78, 2.65). Within this connected subsample, respondents under 30 reported stronger place attachment than those aged 45+ (p < 0.001), but this finding does not address population-level generational trends because disconnected individuals were excluded. No causal claims are warranted given the cross-sectional design, purposive sampling, failure of discriminant validity, and ceiling effects. Findings are mixed (descriptive hypotheses supported; factor structure not supported); the study provides only hypothesis-generating evidence and offers no policy recommendations. Alternative structures (bifactor, two-factor combining PS/SM) require testing with larger samples and revised instruments.