Disentangling the housing satisfaction puzzle: Does homeownership really matter?

Luis Diaz-Serrano ()

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2009, vol. 30, issue 5, 745-755

Abstract: There is a general consensus that homeownership has beneficial effects for both individuals and society in many outcomes. However, research regarding the effect of homeownership on individuals' subjective well-being remains inconclusive. In this paper, for the first time, we provide empirical evidence for the link between homeownership and housing satisfaction using panel data. We use the eight waves of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) covering the period 1994-2001. We observe that renters who become homeowners not only experience a significant increase in housing satisfaction, but also after changing their tenure status, they obtain a different utility from the same housing context. This evidence might provide support to the hypothesis that a share of the differences in the perceived utility derived from housing can be attributed to (un)fulfilled expectations or aspirations regarding homeownership.

Keywords: Housing; satisfaction; Subjective; well-being; Homeownership; Fixed-effects; Housing; aspirations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (63)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-4870(09)00062-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:30:y:2009:i:5:p:745-755

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().