The role of personality in neighborhood satisfaction

Abstract

Urbanists have long been interested in understanding what makes people satisfied with their neighborhoods. However, relatively little is known about how residents’ personality traits may affect their neighborhood satisfaction. In this paper, we explore the direct and indirect associations of personality traits with neighborhood satisfaction in a representative sample of adults in Michigan (USA). We find that each of the personality traits in the five factor model are associated with neighborhood satisfaction in the same way that they are known to be associated with subjective well-being. However, we fail to observe evidence that personality traits moderate the association between perceptions of neighborhoods and neighborhood satisfaction, or that personality’s association with neighborhood satisfaction is mediated by neighborhood perceptions. We conclude that there is potential for drawing on theoretical and empirical developments in positive psychology for understanding neighborhood satisfaction, but observe that the underlying mechanisms for the association between personality and neighborhood satisfaction remain unknown.

Neighborhood selection by parent personality, depression, and coparent support: A two-study replication.

“…Another indicator is the theoretical evidence that supports the candidate as a selection factor. The compositional or systemic model focuses on individual differences in demographic and personality as an explanation for variation in neighborhood choice and satisfaction (Neal & Brutzman, 2023). Support from a partner or coparent also predicts family relocation (Stevenson et al, 2018) and could be particularly salient when faced with the task of choosing where to relocate.…”