North Brabant and Limburg constitute a catholic area within the mainly protestant
nation of the Netherlands. The mentality of the inhabitants of this southern region is
considered to be different, more exuberant than elsewhere in the Netherlands.
Therefore, a relation with aspects of culture can not be excluded.
Dimensions of meaning
The application of principal components analysis to the rating of potential firm
locations in the northern Netherlands and Germany uncovers components of a similar
nature as the ones revealed in Figures 4 and 5. For each of these areas, we find
components that can be interpreted as relative location and as agglomeration effects, in
addition to components of a subjective nature that seem to represent the quality of the
residential environment and language and/or culture (Meester 2004). Some of these
components can also be found in the outcome of the research by Holvoet (1981) in
Belgium. In combination with their apparent general validity, the nature of the
identified components allows them to be linked up to the results of research in
psychology, especially those obtained by Osgood et al. (1957).
Osgood et al. used factor analysis to explore the relation between various types of
scales, in general but also as applied to individual concepts. They analyzed a wide range
of data matrices. The most surprising outcome is the consistency of the results: no
matter which concepts are being analyzed, the resulting factors are essentially always
the same. The three most important factors that result, time and again, are identified by
Osgood et al. as ‘evaluation’, ‘potency’, and ‘activity’.
The first factor (evaluation) represents moral judgments and subjective evaluations such
as pretty-ugly. The second factor (potency) refers to oppositions such as large-small and
strong-weak. It covers all types of scales that can be used to determine the position of an
object by means of objective measurements. The third factor (activity) is the dynamic
element of the set. This factor consists of typical oppositions such as fast-slow and
active-passive. Together, these three factors comprise the main dimensions of the
meaning of any concept.
The research described in the present paper also deals with the meaning of concepts,
specifically towns, as interpreted by individuals, specifically entrepreneurs. An
important difference with the research by Osgood et al. is that the study of the locational
preferences of entrepreneurs is one-dimensional in a sense. It is about the suitability of
places as a firm location, a characteristic that is comparable to the evaluative dimension.
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