PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2016, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (2): 184-194.doi: 10.18306/dlkxjz.2016.02.005

• Articles | Region and Urban • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Satisfaction evaluation of living environment and influencing factors in the Bohai Rim area

Yunxiao DANG1,2,3(), Jianhui YU1,2,*(), Wenzhong ZHANG1,2, YeJin LI4, Li CHEN5, Dongsheng ZHAN1,2   

  1. 1. Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
    2. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
    3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
    4. College of Resource Environment and Tourism, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100048, China
    5. College of Applied Arts and Science, Beijing Union University, Beijing 100191, China
  • Received:2015-07-01 Accepted:2015-10-01 Online:2016-02-10 Published:2016-02-10
  • Contact: Jianhui YU E-mail:dangyx.09s@igsnrr.ac.cn;yujh@igsnrr.ac.cn
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China, No 41230632, No.41201169

Abstract:

In recent years, living environment of urban areas in China is attracting increasingly more attention of researchers and urban residents particularly due to the problems caused by rapid economic development. Meanwhile, improving living environment quality is becoming an important target of urban development for the Chinese government. In spite of the increasing number of studies on living environment at smaller scales, few studies have focused on the city scale. Based on a large survey conducted in 2014 in 43 cities of the Bohai Rim area, this study used multilevel modeling, GIS spatial analysis, and multiple linear regression to evaluate the living environment using residents’ subjective perception as indicators, then analyzed the impact of city characteristics on the heterogeneity of the evaluation results. Several conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) There is a significant disparity of evaluation results between the 43 cities. The differences of influencing factors at the city level can explain 20% of the total satisfaction variance. The disparity of living environment quality of cities cannot be neglected in related research on the social, economic, and development issues of cities. Cities in Liaoning Province ranked the highest in the evaluation result while cities in Hebei Province were the worst due to the concentration of massive heavy industries, especially the steel industry. (2) Environment health is the main problem for all the cities that ranked low in the evaluation, which reaffirms that the key point to improve living environment quality is to control environment pollution. (3) Cities with larger land area and population and higher economic development levels normally ranked the lowest with regard to residents’ satisfaction. Satisfaction on living environment is higher in small and medium-sized cities as compared to large cities. Residents living in coastal cities are more satisfied than inland cities. (4) At present, smog control and reduction is key to improving the quality of living environment in the Bohai Rim area.

Key words: living environment, satisfaction evaluation, influencing factors, Bohai Rim area