Neighborhood satisfaction, physical and perceived naturalness and openness

This study examined neighborhood satisfaction in relation to naturalness and openness. It used Geographic Information System (GIS) and Landsat satellite imagery to physically measure the environmental attributes. Through path analysis it examined the relationship among the attributes, resident ratings of those environmental attributes, their satisfaction with them, and their overall neighborhood satisfaction (n = 725). We expected overall neighborhood satisfaction to relate to the resident's ratings of the environmental attributes and to the physical measures of them. The path model showed that overall neighborhood satisfaction was associated directly with the physical measure of building density and indirectly with the physical measure of vegetation rate through perception and evaluation of them. The perceptions and evaluations of the attributes related to one another. With refinements, GIS and Landsat data geo-related to survey data can offer a powerful tool for understanding the complex nature of neighborhood satisfaction and behavior.