Assessment of Citizen’s Satisfaction about the Quality of Residential Environment (Case Study: Zarghan City)

Introduction Residential satisfaction is one of the main topics in which the urban researchers are interested. Residents' assessment of the quality of their residential environment is effective in measuring the achievement of the goals and the success of the urban projects. According to the 2016 statistics, more than 54 percent of the world's population lives in cities. The urban residential environment has become the main habitat for the people around the world. According to the country’s census in 2016, over 59 million people live in cities. With respect to the increasing urbanization and the high rate of changes in urban texture due to various reasons, the quality of residential environment in urban areas has been severely reduced. Therefore, in order to continue the urban life by satisfying the minimum human needs, it is necessary to pay attention to the urban environment quality and the citizens' satisfaction from the quality of their habitat. Therefore, as the small towns have their own specific features and environments; it is important to evaluate the quality of these environments to reflect in the degree of satisfaction. The purpose of this present study is to assess the quality of residential environment in Zarghan, Shiraz County. We try to answer the following two questions: A) what is the degree of the satisfaction from residential environment quality in Zarghan? B) Which indices of satisfaction from the residential environment quality have the greatest effect on the citizens’ willingness to reside in this town in the future? It is noteworthy that the theoretical approaches to the residential environment quality can be divided into the following categories of A) The physical design and B) social-spatial approaches including human ecology, quality of life, social and interactive indices, and assessment of the degree of residential satisfaction. According to the objectives of the approach, the degree of satisfaction has been selected as the theoretical approach in this study. Methodology This research is practical in scope and is descriptive and analytical in method. To collect the required data, two methods of library and survey methods were applied. The statistical population of this research is the households living in Zarghan. The sample size of the study was 120 people who were randomly selected and completed the questionnaire. The unit of research analysis was the households residing in the city in the time period of the year 2018. The validity of the questionnaire was evaluated based on the opinions of the urban planning specialists and its reliability was examined and confirmed by Cronbach's alpha test. Descriptive and inferential statistics (one-sample t-test, one-way ANOVA, correlation coefficient and regression method) were used to process the data. Zarghan is located at an altitude of 1600 meters above the sea level, about 30 kilometers to Shiraz in northeast part and on the southern slope of Zarghan Mountain. Results and discussion The analysis of the individual characteristics of the respondents indicated that 62.5% of the participants were male and 37.5% were female with an average age of 37.23 years old and the average duration of their residence in Zarghan was 29.5 years. In terms of education, the majority of respondents (31.7%) had undergraduate education; and in terms of occupational situation, most of them (35.8%) were active in the service sector of economy. An investigation on the respondents' views about the their satisfaction of residence in this city showed that 16.7% of the respondents had very low and low satisfaction, 30.8% were almost satisfied, and 52.5% of them were very satisfied and highly satisfied. In relation to the desire to stay there in the future, the results indicated that 20% of the opinions showed very low and low willingness, while 33.3% of the people were almost willing to reside in this city and 46.6% were highly willing to reside. In terms of satisfaction with the quality of the residential environment, the findings showed that in all the five indices, the degree of satisfaction was above the average level. In this regard, the study of the calculated significance level showed that apart from the index of residential unit, the significance level was less than 0.05. The results of ANOVA test indicated that there was a significant difference between the indices of satisfaction about the residential environment. The findings indicated that there was a significant relationship between each of the 5 studied indices. Conclusion Urban development requires attention of experts and planners to different indices. Satisfaction with the residential environment quality is one of these indices which play a significant role in the process of urban planning and development. Citizens' satisfaction with their residential environment quality results in their willingness to reside as well as participate in urban development plans and projects. This research has assessed the people’s satisfaction from the residential environment quality of Zarghan. According to the results of one-sample t-test, satisfaction of the residential environment quality in Zarghan was higher than average. The results of ANOVA showed that among the indices of the study, the index of public services and the index of social characteristics of the environment have the highest score. Finally, the results of the regression method revealed that among the indices of satisfaction of the residential environment quality, the social characteristics of the environment and accessibility had the highest influence on the willingness to future residence in the city. According to these interpretations and the obtained results, it is suggested that it is necessary to improve the degree of satisfaction of the the quality of residential environment in Zarghan.