|
|
|
| RESIDENTIAL SATISFACTION OF COMMUNITY SOCIAL CAPITAL: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF MIDDLE AND LOW INCOME RESIDENTS IN URBAN BEIJING |
| LIU Zhi-lin, LIAO Lu, NIU Chen-lin |
| School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China |
|
|
|
|
Abstract Residential satisfaction is an important concept in assessing residents' subjective wellbeing of living environment and quality of life. In the past two decades, scholars have investigated the patterns and factors of residential satisfaction in urban China in the transitional context of urban restructuring and social stratification. Drawing from existing literature, this paper establishes a systematic measurement of social capital that can be applied to the urban China. Particularly, we measure neighborhood social capital by two dimensions-mutual trust and shared values, and community social networks. The dimension of mutual trust and shared values is measured by four indicators, namely the neighborhood trust, shared value, trust towards community organizations and the willingness to support each other. Community social network is measured by strong ties and weak ties. We then explore the role of social capital in residential satisfaction based on a resident survey of nine moderate-to-low income neighborhoods in Beijing conducted in 2010. Results from ordinal regression models show that, in addition to housing conditions and socio-demographic variables, social capital is positively correlated with residential satisfaction. Moreover, different dimensions of social capital tend to have different influence on residential satisfaction to different extents. In particular, among six social capital indicators, mutual trust among residents has the biggest explaining power than the other five indicators.
|
|
Received: 27 May 2014
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2015, Vol. 30 
