Abstract:
Concentrating on objective measures of an individual household’s situation may be insufficient when dealing with the determinants of the satisfaction with residential environment. There is a long history of relative measurement in the economics literature, especially in welfare studies, in which ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ may play an important role in people’s evaluations of their different life circumstances. Conceptually, the reference group for the relative measurement refers to people who affect the individual the most. Neighbours, as a group who live shoulder-to-shoulder with the person, may be the relevant reference group for some situations. In this study, we analyse the role of relative residential positions, in relation to neighbours, in addition to the household’s absolute residential position in determining the satisfaction of residents. Reference groups are considered as neighbours living over different geographic scales, neighbours who are the symbols of success over different geographic scales, and neighbours who may be visited in a 5-minute walk. Results indicate that while absolute crowding and absolute density affect residential satisfaction negatively, none of the relative crowding measures affect residential satisfaction significantly. Further investigations would be needed to find an optimal reference group and an optimal set of subjective measures for social comparisons.
