Non-linear asymmetric gap models of residential satisfaction: formulation and empirical evidence

This paper proposes non-linear asymmetric gap–satisfaction models to assess the influence of the gap between aspirations and perceived residential attributes on residential satisfaction. Two variants of the residential gap are specified based on the difference and ratio between aspiration and reality. Besides the influence of residential gap, the interactions with social-demographics are incorporated in three specifications of gap–satisfaction relationship. Using empirical data collected from eight renovated historical blocks in two Chinese cities, the relative performances of the proposed gap models are compared with truncated linear symmetric gap models and traditional linear (absolute) difference models for housing, living environmental and neighbourhood attributes. The estimation results indicate that overall the non-linear asymmetric gap models outperform the linear gap models. The model fit for housing and living environmental attributes are very good. Satisfaction for housing attributes is predicted best with non-linear asymmetric gap ratio models, while the environmental attributes are best represented by non-linear asymmetric difference models. In case of the neighbourhood dimension, non-linear asymmetric gap ratio models show the best performance, while these models yield a good fit only for two attributes. The interaction effect of social-demographics is found to vary between residential attributes.