Residential satisfaction among resettled tenants in public rental housing in Wuhan, China: Fid-Bau Portal

Residential satisfaction among resettled tenants in public rental housing in Wuhan, China

Li, Jintao / Li, Dezhi / Ning, Xin / Sun, Jun / Du, Hua

Abstract Residential satisfaction is closely related to the quality of life of residents, especially for the low-income households. The housing policy in China views public rental housing (PRH) and shanty town renovation as the major livelihood projects. To date very few studies have attempted to examine the residential satisfaction of PRH tenants who used to live in shanty towns. Unlike the popular ordered logistic model in existing Chinese studies that often neglect the parallel regression assumption, this study employ generalized ordered logistic model to investigate the resettled tenants’ satisfaction with PRH neighborhood by drawing from a randomly sampled survey of tenants in Wuhan. The empirical analysis suggests that housing and neighborhood characteristics, including per capita living space, housing design, as well as neighborhood and public facilities, exert positive and significant impacts on tenants’ residential satisfaction. Lease management and property services are also significant determinants of tenants’ satisfaction, whereas rent demonstrates negative and significant impact. The variables of residential attitude such as neighborhood interaction, residence comparison and willingness to live, help to enhance tenants’ residential satisfaction. In particular, neighborhood and public facilities are important to predict elderly tenants’ satisfaction. The interaction effects show that the socio-demographic variables such as gender, age, education, occupation, income and household size, are significantly negatively correlated with the residential satisfaction. Housing authorities should put in additional effort to enhance the performance of PRH and shanty town renovation programs and improve resettled tenants’ quality of life.