Neighborhood Satisfaction Among Urban Dwellers

Three approaches to explaining and predicting neighborhood satisfaction are compared in a survey of 550 New York City residents. The models are: a belief‐affect approach which proposes that evaluations of specific aspects of a community are combined to yield overall satisfaction ratings; a commitment approach, which looks at the impact of emotional and economic ties to the neighborhood; and an availability approach, which emphasizes the impact of salient beliefs about the community on satisfaction. Some support is found for all three models, though it is suggested that the availability approach may provide the most useful and compelling model for explaining the psychological processes involved in evaluating one's neighborhood.