People living in ageing buildings: Their quality of life and sense of belonging

The first objective of this study is to develop measures of housing-related environmental factors (quality of dwelling, neighbours and community) and place belonging. Another objective is to test the impacts of housing-related environmental factors on quality of life (QoL) and place belonging. Interview data were collected from 576 residents in six districts that had been designated for demolition as part of a major urban renewal programme in Hong Kong. The findings showed that the QoL measures (life satisfaction, family life and health) were related weakly (or not at all) to various demographic and socio-economic factors. By contrast, the environmental factors, when added to the regression equations, significantly raised the variance explained. For place belonging, the environmental factors closest to the home of the residents (i.e. quality of dwelling and neighbours) exerted a greater influence than the more distal factor (i.e. the wider community). The overall findings demonstrated the relevance of housing to two issues-QoL and place belonging-that are important topics in environmental social psychology relating to urban renewal.