An Intergenerational Approach to Perceived Housing

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Based on concepts from environmental gerontology and life-span psychology, this study aims at comparing perceived housing and person-environment (p-e) fit across three age groups. Young (20–30 years old; n = 125), young-old (55–65 years old; n = 42) and old-old adults (80–90 years old; n = 21) filled in an online or paper-pencil questionnaire on perceived housing and p-e fit. As expected, ANOVAs revealed significant differences in perceived housing between young and young-old adults and between young and old-old adults, but not between young-old and old-old adults. Social and comfort p-e fit contributed significantly to the prediction of perceived housing, while basic p-e fit did not. These findings show the relevance of differentiated assessments of housing processes to foster an age-group related understanding of housing needs and preferences in practice.