Community Environment Perception on Depression: The Mediating Role of Subjective Social Class

Liqin Zhang and Lin Wu
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Liqin Zhang: School of Sociology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Lin Wu: School of Sociology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 15, 1-16

Abstract: Depression has become a major social issue of global concern, which has seriously threatened the quality of an individual’s life. Although the relationship between community environment and depression has aroused heated debate, the empirical research on the relationship between community environment perception and public depression is still relatively insufficient. Data for this study are from China Family Panel Studies in 2016, which were conducted by the institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University. This paper has tested group differences in the influence of community environment on public depression, as well as the mediating role of subjective social class between community environment perception and depression, so as to further explore the social psychological effect of community environment. The empirical study found that there are group differences in the impacts of community environment perception on depression. Specifically, men, rural residents, and people aged 60 and under are more likely to be depressed which were affected by the perception of community environment. Furthermore, we have found that the subjective social class can partly mediate community environment perception and depression. That is to say, the perception of community environment can induce depression by influencing the individual’s subjective social class. Among them, community living environment and community public facilities have the greatest impact, community emotional attachment and community security situation have the second impact, and neighborhood mutual aid and neighborhood relationship have the least impact. In other words, the community environment is deeply endowed with a social psychological effect. To ameliorate the public’s depression, it is necessary to consider the construction of community physical environment and the cultivation of harmonious community culture as powerful measures not to be ignored. In short, the important role of community environmental intervention in alleviating the public’s depression caused by social class cognition deserves attention.

Keywords: community environment; subjective social class; depression; internal mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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