Journal Article

The impact of immediate urban environments on people’s momentary happiness

Zhou, Suhong, Su, Lingling, Zhang, Xue, Kwan, Mei-Po, Chai, Yanwei

2022

Overview

The research interest of urban researchers and geographers in the relationship between urban environments and happiness has been increasing. Previous studies have mostly focused on people’s long-term overall wellbeing. However, there is limited evidence that momentary happiness is associated with immediate urban environments. This study provides new evidence on this issue. 144 participants living in Guangzhou, China, were asked to repeatedly self-report their momentary happiness through ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and the day reconstruction method (DRM). The microenvironment variables were captured by portable sensors, while the built environment variables were captured by associating the GPS response locations with objective spatial data. The results indicate that momentary happiness is influenced by immediate microenvironment variables and built environment characteristics including temperature, noise, PM2.5, population, POI density, POI types and street intersections. On the other hand, the use of different sizes of contextual units affects the results. The built environment in 100 m buffers and the microenvironment has higher explanatory power for momentary happiness recorded by EMA than the built environment in 500 m buffers. Similarly, the temporality of the contextual influences also affects the results. Urban environment features have higher explanatory power for real-time momentary happiness recorded by EMA than recalled momentary happiness recorded by DRM. These results also strongly corroborate the results of recent studies on the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP) and partly explain the inconsistency in the results of past research. 城市研究人员和地理学家对城市环境和幸福感之间关系的研究兴趣一直在增加。以前的研究大多集中在人们的长期整体幸福感上。然而，有限的证据表明短暂的幸福感与直接的城市环境有关。这项研究提供了这方面的新证据。144名生活在中国广州的参与者被要求通过生态瞬间评估 (EMA) 和日间重建法 (DRM) 反复自我报告他们的瞬间幸福感。微环境变量由便携式传感器捕捉，而建筑环境变量则通过将全球定位系统响应位置与客观空间数据相关联来捕获。结果表明，瞬间幸福感受即时微环境变量和建筑环境特征的影响，包括温度、噪声、PM2.5、人口、兴趣点密度、兴趣点类型和街道交叉口。另一方面，使用不同的环境单位尺度会影响结果。100米缓冲区的建筑环境和微环境对EMA记录的瞬间幸福感的解释力高于500米缓冲区的建筑环境。同样，环境影响的暂时性也会影响结果。城市环境特征对EMA记录的实时瞬间幸福感的解释力高于DRM记录的回忆瞬间幸福感。这些结果也有力地证实了最近关于不确定地理环境问题 (UGCoP) 的研究结果，并部分解释了过去研究结果的不一致性。

• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc,SAGE Publications,Sage Publications Ltd
• Subject: Buffers / Built environment / Context / Density / Ecological momentary assessment / Geographers / Happiness / Inconsistency / Microenvironments / Noise / Particulate matter / Population density / Power / Self evaluation / Self report / Spatial data / Time / Urban areas / Urban environments / Variables / Well being