This study intended to test whether attachment to one’s own residential place at neighborhood level could represent a coping response for the elderly (consistently with the “docility hypothesis;” Lawton, 1982), when dealing with the demands of unfamiliar environments, in order to balance their reduction of spatial abilities. Specifically, a sequential path was tested, in which neighborhood attachment was expected to play a buffer role between lowered spatial competence and neighborhood satisfaction. The participants (N = 264), senior citizens (over 65-year-old), responded to a questionnaire including the measures of spatial self-efficacy, spatial anxiety, attitude toward wayfinding, residential attachment and residential satisfaction. Results from the mediation analysis showed that a lower perceived spatial self-efficacy is associated to a higher spatial anxiety, and both promote a more negative attitude toward wayfinding tasks in non-familiar places. This leads to a higher attachment to one’s own neighborhood, which in turn predicts a higher residential satisfaction. Thus, the “closure” response of becoming more attached to their residential place may be an adaptive strategy of the elderly for compensating the Person-Environment (P-E) mis-fit (Lawton and Nahemow, 1973) when they feel unable (or less able) to cope with the demands of unfamiliar environments.

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Residential Place Attachment as an Adaptive Strategy for Coping With the Reduction of Spatial Abilities in Old Age.

The way we perceive a place implies who can live there: Essentialisation of place and attitudes towards diversity

This article presents the findings of a research project that aimed to validate, in a Latin American setting, a scale to measure perceived residential environment quality (PREQ), developed ...

Validation of a scale to measure perceived residential environment quality in a Latin American setting / Validación de una escala para medir la percepción de la calidad del entorno residencial en un contexto latinoamericano

The Cumulative Risk Model (CRM) has usually been applied to developmental and quality of life psychology; however, the CRM could also be applied to the urban safety and personal well-being of people living in urban environments, since cities are complex, multi-risk scenarios. This paper presents two studies meant to provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. The first study (N=287) was aimed to create and validate a set of scales to measure the cumulative risk index and to pilot study two. Study two (N = 540), instead, aimed at showing how a higher number of risk factors is associated to a higher level of perception of insecurity/fear of crime and a smaller level of wellbeing/satisfaction with life and provided consistent correlational evidence, controlling for the neighborhood effect. These studies showed that the CRM can be used to study urban safety issues, since perception of personal safety, fear of crime and well-being are multidimensional constructs, and are affected by a large series of environmental and psychosocial risk factors. The CRM could have significant applications for policymaking and urban renovation.

The Cumulative Risk Model to encompass perceived urban safety and well-being

The purpose of this research is to utilize factor analyses to evaluate the reliability and factorial structure of an abbreviated version of the instrument that includes indicators of perceived residential environment quality (PREQ) and neighborhood attachment (NA) in Chinese urban environments. The instrument has 11 scales that measure PREQ and 1 scale measuring neighborhood attachment (NA). Architectural and urban planning aspects (three scales: Architectural and Town-planning Space, Organization of Accessibility and Roads, Green Areas), socio-relational aspects (one scale: People and Social Relations), functional aspects (four scales: Welfare Services, Recreational Services, Commercial Services, and Transport Services), and contextual aspects (three scales: Pace of Life, Environmental Health, and Upkeep and Care) are all covered by the 11 PREQ scales. A total of 1,332 people living in Chinese urban cities completed a self-report questionnaire that included these 12 scales. A calibration sample and a validation sample that were randomly split from the total sample verified the factorial structures of this instrument, and the abbreviated instrument had acceptable reliability and validity. The validated abbreviated version of the PREQ and NA instruments allowed for a more reliable and manageable tool that might lessen respondents' exhaustion of a large number of items, this also contributed to the policy-making for urban planning and practical architectural design.

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Validation of the abbreviated indicators of perceived residential environment quality and neighborhood attachment in China

Vérification de la structure factorielle et de la fiabilité des preqis en France et test d’un modèle de prédiction de l’attachement au quartier : une étude sur un échantillon parisien

J. . Y. Mariette

Papers

Vérification de la structure factorielle et de la fiabilité des preqis en France et test d’un modèle de prédiction de l’attachement au quartier : une étude sur un échantillon parisien