Using “Home” to Explain the Factors Affecting Residential Satisfaction The Case of Panama’s Heterogeneous Environments During The Covid-19 Crisis

ABSTRACT

This study’s goal is to explore the representations of home that underlie residential satisfaction during the Covid-19 crisis, by developing new tools for housing research. We hypothesize that the concept of home helps explain the different experiences of social groups during the confinement period, and its effect on residential satisfaction. To test our hypothesis, we developed a mixed-methods approach departing from 135 original surveys. . First a quantitative index was created, measuring four groups of home dimensions; the inside of home (1), the outside connection (2), home as protection against stressors (3) and home as a place for positive adaptation (4). Secondly, we used content analysis to enlarge the explanatory power of the index. Our results show the index is a viable tool for exploring the different experiences of confinement. Our method potentially improves research on residential satisfaction leading to more resilience, and better design guidelines for professionals.

KEYWORDS:

• Concept of home
• Covid-19
• residential satisfaction
• evidence
• housing policy
• resilience

Acknowledgments

This research project and article was supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) through the International Network of Government Science Advice (INGSA). Our work is focused on studying the dynamics of Panama’s housing sector evidence-to-policy pathways during the Covid-19 pandemic. We thank the reviewers for their excellent comments and suggestions. And thank Michel Després Ph.D. for his valuable contribution to the paper’s fit within current people-environment research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Notes

1. “…refers to one’s anxiety or worries about their exposure to a risk” (Bae and Chang 2021).

2. The appendix includes the list of scores used for each group to facilitate replicating our results or applying the methodology to other samples.

3. Translated using DeepL and subsequently checked by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Development Research Centre [INGSA Knowledge Associates 2021].