Linking crowding, housing inadequacy, and perceived housing stress

This study sought to explain how housing inadequacy affects inhabitants' experiences of dwelling-related stress. We defined housing inadequacy as the gap between self-reported availability and importance of specific interior features, and we measured stress from self-reported perceptions of efficacy or helplessness with regard to the home. From a survey of 1668 community residents, we found that inadequate retreat and lack of dwelling-related efficacy each mediated the effect of inadequate comfort upon dwelling-related helplessness. Two moderation models, predicting efficacy and helplessness respectively, compared whether respondents reported that their households used all habitable rooms for sleeping. This rooms-ratio metric interacted with the more traditional density metric of persons-per-room; as persons-per-room increased, respondents in households using all rooms for sleeping had a steeper decrease in efficacy as well as a steeper increase in helplessness. We also explored some methodological issues in describing person-environment fit in a demographically heterogeneous sample.