Subjective quality of life measurement in Taipei

The measurement of quality of life (QOL) can be used as an environmental quality diagnosis of previous policy strategies, and is a required foundation for drafting future spatial and urban planning policies. This study first reviews the literature on QOL. This study then adopts the widespread Detroit Area Study as the basic conceptual structure with modifications to fit the social, cultural and geographical context of Taipei. The modified DAS model is adopted to guide this study. A field survey of 331 Taipei residents is conducted to survey subjective resident assessments of QOL, and a LISREL analysis is also performed to explore the causal relationships among the QOL variables. Results of this study demonstrate that district, marriage, age, education, and income influence various satisfaction domains. The LISREL result has acceptable goodness of fit. The model results show that the main influences on satisfaction are community status and local attachments, followed by neighborhood satisfaction. However, the influences of neighborhood environmental assessment and neighborhood attachments are trivial, even insignificant. To summarize, respondents are more concerned with personal safety and public services, which are also the key influences on QOL for Taipei.