Which factors influence city quality-of-life perception:
the interaction between city and life satisfaction.
I. Shafranskaya
D. Potapov
A. Bozhya-Volya
Higher School of Economics
Abstract
Quality-of-life estimation is considered to be not only the performance indicator for city
management efficiency. In term of the city, it is the complex reflection of residential
satisfaction both with the urban services quality and with various life domains. This
study attempts to explore the nature of interactions between residential satisfaction with
the urban services, the city and the life, which could help in determining of the urban
policy priorities for the particular city of Perm.
Key words
Quality-of-life, city satisfaction, life satisfaction, urban services.
Introduction
It is generally accepted that the task of city management is increasingly
becoming the creation of urban conditions sufficiently attractive for the current and
potential residents. These conditions are could be evaluated as the quality of different
urban services and thus city quality-of-life monitoring becomes an important issue of city
managerial routine.
City quality-of-life is considered to be viewed from two sides: as an objective
estimation based on the factual measures of different city indicators or as the subjective
individuals self-report on their satisfaction with different city services (Obulicz –
Kozaryn, 2013). Several researches argue that the complexity of urban living
environment can not be represented by a single measure, rank or index (Diener and
Suh, 1997; Rogerson, 1999), especially in case when the reported growth of indices or
ratings of a city does not correspond to the perception of the residents. This
presumption motivates researchers to investigate the relationship between subjective
measures of city quality-of-life deeper (Baldiccini and Checchi, 2009). Here the
underlying assumption of subjective approach is that city quality-of-life could be
considered as the individual’s subjective experience of dealing with different urban
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services (Diener and Suh, 1997; Kahneman and Kruger, 2006), which finally could be
expressed via the level of satisfaction with the city as a whole.
Exploring the complex nature of city satisfaction Cummins (2000) argues that the
subjective measures of city and life satisfaction inter-correlate and this is obvious –
people who feel happy with their life conditions also tend to be satisfied with the
conditions of the environment which surrounds them in life. Using the metaphor of ‘two
sides of the city quality-of-life coin’ one could state the following: on the one hand to be
satisfies with community environment, residents prefer to have sufficiently high level of
urban services in healthcare, education, housing, employment, cultural and recreation
resources, public safety, trade and transport infrastructure etc. On the other hand,
residents’ satisfaction is largely determined by the variety of life domains (for example,
family, income and different social, consumer, leisure, spiritual and environmental
aspects). This raises the task of separation of residents’ overall satisfaction with the city,
urban services quality and personal happiness perception (Jeffres and Dobos, 1995).
To choose the most appropriate way of urban services improvement the city
authorities need to put some priorities especially under the pressure of limited budget.
Deciding these priorities both the perception of quality of urban services and the
complex nature of city satisfaction should be taken into account. The study reported in
this paper focuses on the analytical approach used to purify the estimates of correlation
between the residents’ perception of urban services quality and city quality-of-life on the
whole from the satisfaction with their life domains. This approach allows city managers
to take advantage of more accurate estimations to tune urban policy.
Research design and methodology
The empirical research is based on the theoretical notion that city quality-of-life is
affected by the satisfaction with urban services on the one hand and subjective
perception of happiness on the other hand. We use the data from the residents’
satisfaction survey sponsored by local authorities in the city of Perm in order to estimate
the residents’ satisfaction with the quality of urban services. The sampling procedure
was carefully designed taking into account the spatial distribution of population in Perm.
A structured sample of 1800 respondents was generated for the study and a face-toface survey method was used. The analytical approach assumed the model
construction which related the urban services perceived quality, city overall satisfaction
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and personal happiness perception. Path analysis was applied to separate the effects
influencing the overall city satisfaction.
Preliminary results
The findings are interim. We managed to reveal the basic relationships between
the model components, which are statistically significant. In order to explore the
relationship deeper we intend to estimate the robustness of the results for different
groups of residents specifying the socio-demographic and locational characteristics
(e.g. – age, marital status, residential district and level of education).
Practical implications
From a managerial perspective we show how local authorities can use the model
in order to prioritize the strategic arrays of city development increasing residents’
satisfaction. The results could provide an illustration of the determinants of subjective
satisfaction with the city, that we assume are of great importance for the city policy
makers. As the model purifies the influence of the individual’s life satisfaction influencing
on the satisfaction with the urban services, the correlation measures provide the “net”
estimations, which could help in prioritizing of city management tasks. Given this, our
study can contribute to a better understanding and management of the major urban
services that influence city quality of life perception. Differentiation of city satisfaction
factors among various groups of residents (e.g. – by age or residential district) could
allow to open prospects for justification of youth policy or more appropriate urban
programs for diverse city districts.
Originality / value
The paper discusses the analytical framework that encompasses city quality-of-life
measurement and monitoring tasks.
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