Assessment of Environmental Demands of Age-Friendly Communities from Perspectives of Different Residential Groups: A Case of Wuhan, China

Jintao Li, Yan Dai, Cynthia Changxin Wang and Jun Sun
Additional contact information
Jintao Li: School of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environment, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China
Yan Dai: School of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Environment, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China
Cynthia Changxin Wang: School of Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
Jun Sun: School of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 15, 1-20

Abstract: Age-friendly communities (AFCs) are an important measure for fostering active aging. The key to achieving an age-friendly living environment is to construct or renovate it according to the residents’ demands. To date, very few studies have attempted to delve into the AFCs’ environmental demand from different groups’ perspectives. Based on the theory of place attachment, the aim of this paper is to explore the demand diversity of different groups for the AFC environment. This study employs the nonparametric test and the Ordinal Priority Approach (OPA) to investigate the demands from the residents’ perspectives, and is enhanced by incorporating experts’ opinions. The empirical analysis shows that residents have a high level of demand for the physical environment (indoor and outdoor) and social environment (community services and social participation). At the same time, experts advocate the importance of using digital technologies to support people aged 45–65 who have higher requirements for a community environment than older adults. The findings also show that other backgrounds, such as gender, living arrangements, and year of the community establishment, lead to different demands. However, the impact of residents’ education level, occupation, income, and self-care ability on the environmental demands is low. Based on the research findings, the paper provides some practical suggestions for the future design and development of AFCs.

Keywords: age-friendly community environment; residential demand; differences; nonparametric test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/15/9120/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/15/9120/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:15:p:9120-:d:872508

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().