Emotional Well-being of Social Housing Residents in Guangzhou, China: How Does Neighborhood Context Matter?

Abstract

China’s social housing programs have been expanding at an unprecedented pace over the past few years. A burgeoning body of the literature has been focused on the enactment and implementation of current social housing policies in China. However, only a handful of studies have attempted to evaluate social housing residents’ quality of life in China, and very little attention has been paid to their emotional well-being. As social housing has been playing an increasingly important role in China’s urban housing system, it is necessary to examine the level and determinants of social housing residents’ emotional well-being. This study examines the contextual and individual factors influencing social housing residents’ emotional well-being, using survey data collected from 13 social housing estates in Guangzhou, China and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approaches. We particularly focus on the effects of both neighborhood environments and individual characteristics and experiences on residents’ emotional well-being. The results of the SEM model indicate that, when other variables are controlled, the perceptions of neighborhood social cohesion exert a significant impact on social housing residents’ emotional well-being, and that the effects of the ratings of neighborhood amenities and the share of social housing in local housing stock are statistically negligible. The results also reveal that housing conditions and personal social ties within the neighborhood play an important role in regulating social housing residents’ emotions. Those who have access to a larger living space and better housing conditions and who have more social capital in the neighborhood tend to report better emotional state. In addition, social housing residents’ ratings of emotional well-being vary with demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, as one’s gender, marital status, and income are associated with his/her physical health, therefore being associated with his/her emotional well-being. This study enriches our understanding of social housing residents’ emotional well-being in China by evaluating the effect of neighborhood physical and social environments. It also contributes to the policy aiming at substantively improving the well-being of the poor in China.