Residential Attachment: Sources of Residential and Community Satisfaction

The residential environment is a particularly important setting for human behavior by virtue of its significance for roles, relationships, and the sense of place in the world. Based on interviews with 2,622 respondents from 42 municipalities in 10 SMSAs across the country, this study tried to clarify some of the dimensions of residential experience that affect residential and community satisfaction. The frequent finding of a strong relationship between social class or majority/minority status and residential satisfaction is examined under controlled conditions. This relationship appears to be mainly a function of the large inequities in housing and neighborhood associated with social inequalities. It is these variations in residential quality that are the direct, primary influences on residential satisfaction. Closer analyses of the specific sources of residential and community satisfaction reveal the prominence of objective features of the residential environment in accounting for such satisfaction. Local social interaction plays a relatively minor part in explaining residential attachment; and its effects are limited to that modest proportion of the population for whom such neighborhood and community relationships are highly valued.