Perceived privacy of the dwelling and psychological restoration during the COVID-19 lockdown

Aurora de Jesús Mejía-Castillo, Rubén Flores-González, Claudio Rafael Castro López and Vicenta Reynoso-Alcántara

Housing Studies, 2025, vol. 40, issue 2, 302-322

Abstract: Dwelling is a fundamental factor for mental health. Lockdowns, established to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2, forced millions of people to take shelter in their homes, enhancing the need to understand the characteristics of the dwelling that promote psychological restoration. In this paper, we analyze the relationship between some perceived conditions of dwelling habitability (appreciation of the physical environment, visible nature, crowding, and privacy) and their effect on psychological restoration through the concept of the perceived restorativeness of dwelling. An online survey was carried out with the participation of 478 Mexican adults. Physical environment, visible nature, crowding, and privacy showed significant correlations with the perceived restorativeness of housing and psychological restoration itself. However, only privacy showed an effect on psychological restoration in structural modelling. We propose that privacy is fundamental to improving dwellings’ restorativeness and restoring their inhabitants, and experts should consider it when designing housing spaces. However, more evidence is needed to generalize beyond the context of lockdowns.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2023.2189230 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:chosxx:v:40:y:2025:i:2:p:302-322

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/chos20

DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2023.2189230

Access Statistics for this article

Housing Studies is currently edited by Chris Leishman, Moira Munro, Ray Forrest, Alex Schwartz, Hal Pawson and John Flint

More articles in Housing Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().