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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1490105
This article is part of the Research Topic Multi-scale Urban Built Environment and Human Health View all 10 articles
A study of the relationship between Housing quality, community attachment and tenants' mental health in urban villages of Chinese megacities
Provisionally accepted- 1 Renmin University of China, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 2 Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
- 3 School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
Housing has long been a prominent social issue in China's mega-cities, profoundly affecting the quality of life of residents. In megacities, urban villages with relatively poor living environments but low living costs are the place of residence for many people, and research on the quality of living in urban villages and their social impacts has long been a hot topic of urban research in China. However, previous research on urban villages in China has paid less attention to the relationship between tenants' mental health and the Housing quality and community attachment in urban villages. Therefore, this study selected seven typical urban villages in Shenzhen as the study cases, collected first-hand anonymous questionnaire data, and used regression analyses to study the mental health status of tenants in urban villages, and explored the mediating role of community attachment in the relationship between Housing quality and residents' mental health. The results of the study show that the Housing quality (𝛽𝛽=0.228, p=<0.05) and Housing affordability (𝛽𝛽=0.196, p=<0.05) of urban villages in megacities all have a significant effect on tenants' mental health, i.e., the better the Housing quality and the lower the Housing affordability, the better the mental health status of urban village tenants is likely to be. At the same time, Community attachment (𝛽𝛽=0.416, p=<0.05) in urban villages significantly and positively affects tenants' mental health, and community attachment is also an important mediating variable of the Housing quality affecting tenants' mental health. This study proposes that improving the quality of living in mega-city urban villages and creating a favourable living environment can increase tenants' attachment to urban villages, as well as significantly improve tenants' mental health, which is what needs to be emphasised in the current regeneration policy for mega-city urban villages in China.
Keywords: Urban villages, Housing quality, Community attachment, tenant mental health, Megacities, Shenzhen
Received: 02 Sep 2024; Accepted: 15 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 He, Chen, Cai, Li and Ye. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hongsheng Chen, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
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