The Effects of Affordable Housing on Subjective Well-being

The A-HOUSE project has three goals. First, it will explore the determinants of residential satisfaction (RS) in affordable housing (AH). Second, it will bring new evidence on how RS of people living in AH affects their global life satisfaction (LS) as a cognitive component of subjective well-being (SWB). Third, this project will identify the differences between the stakeholders' and individuals' perception of the determinants of RS, and it will offer solutions to mitigate the divergences. A-HOUSE will take a case-study approach and focus on Luxembourg, which faces a number of challenges related to dynamic population growth and a widening imbalance between housing demand ans supply.
A-HOUSE will develop a multi-item RS in AH Scale (RSAHS) including objective indicators and subjective evaluations of housing attributes (related to dwelling and neighbourhood). It will add to the literature on RS and LS by exploring the role of housing-related lifestyles, house-related empowerment and RS-LS relation. It will also provide new evidence on how affective components (AC) influence RS in AH and LS. By taking a transdisciplinary approach, A-HOUSE will inform policy-makers and reflect on possible improvements of existing AH models and the introduction of new ones. To this end, A-HOUSE will adopt a mixed-methods approach and triangulate the findings of the following analyses:
(1) participatory modelling involving eight local stakeholders (policy-makers, developers, practitioners, NGO's, academics) aiming to build the stakeholders' conceptual model of relationships between attributes of existing AH and RS;
(2) 16 in-depth biographical interviews with beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of AH representing different household types, to understand which housing attributes bring higher levels of RS (using a means-end chain model framework);
(3) structural equation modelling based on a large-scale housing survey (co-funded by the Ministry of Housing) to estimate multiple interrelated equations, reflecting complexity of relationships between the variables (attributes of AH, levels of RS, LS and AC) in the conceptual model showing the mechanisms of individual RS and LS.