The impact of housing pressure on subjective well-being in urban China

Abstract

Housing pressure is one of the most important factors affecting urban residents' quality of life and subjective well-being (SWB). However, few studies have examined the impact of housing pressure on people's SWB and whether housing pressure has heterogeneous effects on SWB in cities of different sizes and for different social groups is still under-researched. Using data from a large-scale social satisfaction survey of 115,000 respondents across 36 cities in China, this paper employs a multiple linear regression model to explore the combined impacts of both subjective and objective housing pressure on urban residents' SWB. It also examines the heterogeneity effects of housing pressure for different city sizes and housing tenure groups. The results show that individuals' subjective housing pressure is significantly and negatively associated with SWB, and its impact intensity is greater than most perceived living environment factors. As for objective housing pressure, only the housing rent-to-income ratio has a significant negative correlation with SWB. Dimensions of individuals' perceived quality of the living environment are also significant positive predictors for the SWB level of urban residents except for the urbanscape and portrait dimension. Housing pressure has heterogeneous effects on SWB in different city sizes and housing tenure groups.