ウェルビーイング研究に基づく家が関連する主観的幸福とその決定要因

抄録

　Studies about well-being (WB) have been used to build an interdisciplinary research area centered on positive psychology and economics of happiness. WB research is characterized by active use of subjective data about one’s life, called subjective wellbeing (SWB), as indicators of the quality of an individual’s life or their society. SWB has various domains, including ones related to cognitive and emotional well-being, and each has different determinants. For example, life satisfaction, which is the cognitive aspect of SWB, is strongly correlated with income, while emotional well-being has a relatively strong correlation with health and social relationships. There are various theories about SWB’s composition, and the OECD has defined three basic domains of SWB: life evaluation (life satisfaction), emotion (affect, mood), and eudaimonia. Conventional research for assessing residential environments has used “housing satisfaction” as a subjective indicator of housing quality, which belongs to the “cognitive evaluation” domain. However, based on the findings of WB research, it can be inferred that there are diverse subjective domains related to housing quality. Therefore, in the current study, we attempted to construct home-related subjective well-being (HOME-SWB) based on the OECD’s SWB definition: “home satisfaction,” “positive emotions at home,” “negative emotions at home,” and “eudaimonia derived from home.” “Home satisfaction” is the cognitive aspect of HOME-SWB, which is similar to the conventional subjective indicator, housing satisfaction. “Positive emotions at home” includes the frequency of positive emotional experiences at home, such as feeling happy, cheerful, or joyful, while “negative emotions at home” includes the frequency of negative emotional experiences, such as feeling depressed, stressed out, or lonely at home. “Eudaimonia derived from home” indicate to what extent residents obtain experiences of eudaimonic well-being from their homes, such as self-esteem and the sense that life is worth living. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current status of HOME-SWB among 4,000 residents in the Tokyo area and the determinants of each domain of HOME-SWB using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis.

　Our assessment shows that HOME-SWB is closely related to demographics; for example, the relationship between home satisfaction and age is a U-shaped curve, which is similar to the well-known relationship between life satisfaction and age. Therefore, we conducted OLS regression by controlling demographic variables, including gender, age, and household income, and the results show that each domain of HOME-SWB has unique relationships with them. For example, the size of a house strongly affects home satisfaction but not positive emotions or eudaimonic aspects. Having a nice view from windows or a high level of thermal insulation has a relatively strong effect on emotional HOME-SWB. Proactive ways of living in a home, such as being picky about furniture and the interior of one’s home or frequently redecorating rooms, enhance the eudaimonic aspects, such as self-esteem and optimism. When we use conventional subjective information to measure housing satisfaction as an indicator of housing quality, it is noted that the importance of the housing elements that strongly affect cognitive well-being, such as the size of a house, are overestimated, while the importance of elements that have an impact on the emotional and eudaimonic aspects of HOME-SWB are underestimated. There are various subjective domains related to housing quality; therefore, we can conclude that we must measure various domains of HOME-SWB when assessing home-related well-being based on residents’ subjective information.