Residential Satisfaction, Psychological Well-Being, and Personality Traits: Effects on Relocation among Older Adults

Abstract

The focus of this study is the moves made voluntarily in later life. Older adults who engage in voluntary late life relocation are more likely to be white, have better health, have higher socioeconomic status, and have retired from full-time employment. The amenity move, a type of voluntary late life move, is often made by older adults with the above characteristics to a place specifically for community features such as weather, activities, or housing characteristics. The environmental gerontology literature offers some theoretical insight into understanding how an older adult evaluates their environment and suggests that relocation is one possible outcome when an older adult is not satisfied with the environment. This research highlights a new theoretical model, which proposes how personal characteristics and preferences and environmental characteristics influence an individual's evaluation of the environment. The model postulates that a negative evaluation of the environment can lead to relocation. The current study attempts to understand part of the model by examining how personal characteristics such as demographic information, socioeconomic measures, measures of health, retirement status, and personality impact relocation and more specifically amenity relocation directly and indirectly through the appraisal of the environment (residential satisfaction and psychological well-being). The study utilizes the Health and Retirement Study datasets from 2006-2008 and 2008-2010 to test the model because of its psycho-social measures and questions related to relocation. The results indicate that personality and neighborhood social cohesion directly and indirectly influence the decision to engage in relocation and amenity relocation. Specifically, higher levels of openness to experience are directly predictive of relocation in general and amenity relocation. Conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism also influence the decision to relocate through a mediated relationship with neighborhood social cohesion. The results show that when older adults consider relocation, the social aspects of the environment can be just as important as the environment's physical aspects. Governments and senior housing developers can utilize information from this study to improve communities and develop a better understanding of the relocating older adult.