Quality of life (QoL) survey in Hong Kong: Understanding the importance of housing environment and needs of residents from different housing sectors

Zhonghua Gou; Xiaohuan Xie; Yi Lu; Maryam Khoshbakht

doi:10.3390/ijerph15020219

Author(s)

Zhonghua Gou
Xiaohuan Xie
Yi Lu
Maryam Khoshbakht

Related Research Unit(s)

Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Detail(s)

Original language	English
Article number	219
Journal / Publication	International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume	15
Issue number	2
Online published	27 Jan 2018
Publication status	Published - Feb 2018

Link(s)

DOI	DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15020219 Final Published version
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Attachment(s)	Documents 19920302.pdf Final Published version, 323 KB, PDF Publisher's Copyright Statement This full text is made available under CC-BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Link to Scopus	https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85041433628&origin=recordpage
Permanent Link	https://scholars.cityu.edu.hk/en/publications/publication(6e913869-e5f5-4181-9d1b-8132d0377efe).html

Abstract

This study presents a Quality of Life (QoL) survey to understand the influence of the housing environment and needs of residents from different housing sectors. The research focuses on Hong Kong where living conditions have become the main affect for people’s QoL. Through a household survey using a standard instrument “Word Health Organisation (WHO) Quality of Life-BREF”, the article found that among the four WHO QoL domains (Physical Health, Psychological Health, Social Relations And Environment), Environment, particularly its constitute aspect housing environment was the most influential factor for overall quality of life for the public rental housing sector where low-income people live. This research also found that different groups of people have differing needs of their housing environments: the low-income group needs better location and privacy while the medium and high-income groups need better architectural quality. Based on differentiating their needs and wants, this research argues for prioritizing the low-income group’s needs for effectively improving their QoL.