دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی ارزیابی و تعیین کننده رضایت از قابلیت زندگی شهری در چین - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Building livable cities has been an important goal for new urbanization in China. Thus, understanding residents' satisfaction with urban livability in China and its determinants is beneficial for urban planning and policy making regarding livable cities construction. However, scientific evidence on satisfaction with urban livability towards Chinese cities is still lacking. Drawing on large-scale questionnaire surveys conducted in 2015 in 40 major cities in China, this paper aims to explore the characteristics of satisfaction with urban livability and the effect magnitude of its determinants using the geographical detector model. The results show that the respondents are just moderately satisfied with urban livability in China (2.996). With respect to the dimensions of urban livability, the respondents are relatively satisfied with the convenience of public facilities (3.118), the natural environment (3.057) and the sociocultural environment (3.056), while slightly dissatisfied with urban security (2.788), environmental health (2.912) and convenient transportation (2.929). The result of the geographical detector model further reveals that all the six dimensions of urban livability have significant and positive impacts upon overall satisfaction with urban livability, of which the natural environment, convenient transportation, environmental health are the greatest contributing factors. Moreover, individual socioeconomic attributes such as geographical location, type of housing, education, family size, age, hukou status, also exert significant effects on overall satisfaction with urban livability in descending order, but the magnitude of their effects is far less than that of the dimensions of urban livability.

5. Discussion and conclusions

Although there has been increasing public and governmental concern on urban livability in China in recent years, residents' satisfaction with urban livability in China is still understudied, especially at the national level. Based on the constructed urban livability assessment indicators and large-scale questionnaire surveys conducted in 2015 in 40 major cities in China, this study aimed to fill such knowledge gap by examining residents' satisfaction with urban livability and its determinants. The findings from this study not only add new evidence for policy making on livable cities construction in China, but contribute to the existing literature from at least two perspectives. First, different from traditional residential satisfaction research that focuses mainly on the residential neighborhood, this study — based on the notion of the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP) — developed a new conceptual framework and emphasized that people's perceived quality of the urban environment was associated with the areas they are exposed to as they undertake their daily activities and travel. These areas are experienced within the whole city and at different times of the day, and include many areas outside people's residential neighborhoods. Moreover, a novel analytical method (the geographical detector model) was used to examine and compare the effect intensity of the explanatory variables on overall satisfaction with urban livability, a significant concern for policy makers which has been neglected in much of the research. The assessment results showed that the respondents had a mean satisfaction with urban livability of 2.996, which approaches the intermediate value of 3, implying a moderate satisfaction with urban livability in China. This finding is consistent with many other domestic and foreign research (Ibem & Amole, 2013; Mohit et al., 2010; Ren & Folmer, 2016; Tao et al., 2014), which also reported an intermediate level of satisfaction with local urban environment. One possible explanation is that with rapid economic development during the last three decades, urban livability in China has made certain progress in various aspects related to the urban environment and thus earned people's approbation. In terms of the six dimensions of urban livability, the respondents were a little more satisfied with the dimensions of the convenience of public facilities, the natural environment, the sociocultural environment, but are slightly dissatisfied with the dimensions of transportation convenience, environmental health, and urban security. These results seem to suggest that Chinese governments have put more emphasis on the speed of urban development that benefits public facilities convenience and the natural and sociocultural environments, but fail to address some urban sustainability issues, such as long-term transportation planning, environmental protection, and making adequate preparation against urban security risks (Chen, Lü, & Chen, 2016).