A study on the linkages between residential satisfaction and the overall quality of life in Bandar Tun Razak Area of Kuala Lumpur City, Malaysia

Abstract

This paper provides an assessment of the links between residential satisfaction with the housing sector and the overall quality of life (QOL) in Bandar Tun Razak area (BTR). As the QOL concept is multidimensional, five domains were selected to measure the overall QOL namely; economic capacity, safety condition, social involvement and community participation, physical and emotional health, and spiritual life. While for the housing sector, the study involved 32 indicators that cover the different housing features. Besides, In order to obtain a representative sample, a stratified convenient sampling was employed and 331 questionnaires were collected. The findings show that respondents were slightly unsatisfied with safety condition and economic capacity, whereas they were only slightly satisfied with social and community participation which require further attention to the improvement of these three domains. Moreover, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was applied on the housing indicators resulting in the extraction of five factors which are: housing size, neighbourhood quality, public facilities, housing suitability, and housing quality. Among these five factors, it was found that the housing size affects the overall residential satisfaction highly. Eventually, a path diagram was employed to measure links between the housing sub-domains and QOL domains. The results show that the housing size and public facilities influence the economic capacity domain effectively. While the neighbourhood quality and housing suitability affect both safety condition and social and community participation domains.