An Exploratory Research on Structure of Percieved Residential Environment Quality

Abstract

Housing is a composite entity (in the sense of Gary Becker) that fulfils several human need. The main need that this commodity is to fulfil is dwelling, but from environmental satisfaction point of view, housing is more than a dwelling unit and its set of objective characteristics, since it also provides health services, security, privacy, neighborhood and social relations, status, community facilities and services, access to jobs and control over the environment. Thus, the principal way in which individual satisfaction with housing is measured through direct questions about their level of housing satisfaction. The purpose of this paper then is to contribute further research on the conceptualization of individual housing satisfaction as a particular domain of satisfaction with life as a whole, providing empirical evidence to disentangle the effects housing characteristics (hedonic), individual and household characteristics (predictive), as well as social interactions originated in one’s residential neighborhood on this housing satisfaction domain. The main contributions of this paper in relation to previous work are the following. First, the simultaneous inclusion of the hedonic and predictive approach in our valuation (by comparing individuals satisfaction and individuals importance values), Second, we also investigate the relations between values in satisfaction and importance. This qualitative exploratory attempt has done by a data gathering through a close ended questionnaire that is made of focus group research.