An Intergenerational Approach to Perceived Housing

Abstract

Based on concepts from environmental gerontology and life-span psychology, this study aims at comparing perceived housing and person-environment (p-e) fit across three age groups. Young (20–30 years old; n = 125), young-old (55–65 years old; n = 42) and old-old adults (80–90 years old; n = 21) filled in an online or paper-pencil questionnaire on perceived housing and p-e fit. As expected, ANOVAs revealed significant differences in perceived housing between young and young-old adults and between young and old-old adults, but not between young-old and old-old adults. Social and comfort p-e fit contributed significantly to the prediction of perceived housing, while basic p-e fit did not. These findings show the relevance of differentiated assessments of housing processes to foster an age-group related understanding of housing needs and preferences in practice.

Keywords:

• Housing
• perceived housing
• person-environment fit
• intergenerational

Acknowledgements

A longer version of this article was approved as the lead author’s master’s thesis at Heidelberg University in 2015. The second supervisor Prof. Oliver Schilling provided valuable feedback and methodological support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.