Perceived environment and neighbourhood satisfaction: introducing a fuzzy modeling approach

ABSTRACT The present study aims at developing the existing methodology to determine the predictors of neighborhood satisfaction under an uncertain environment. To achieve this purpose, required data are gathered from 320 households living in Shiraz, Iran, including their perceptions of neighborhood social characteristics and neighborhood satisfaction through a questionnaire survey. Due to uncertainty among the numeric independent variables, a set of fuzzy estimation systems are developed, each of which predicts the value of neighborhood satisfaction using the values of one specific subset of the influencing independent variables. According to the findings, the environmental characteristics of neighborhood contribute to improving neighborhood satisfaction more effectively than individual attributes of residents. Fuzzy results, also, show that perceived security, social control and trust are important predictors of neighborhood satisfaction among single variables, while the combination of trust and perceived security has the strongest effect among all variables and can determine neighborhood satisfaction with a high accuracy. Parts of the results were consistent with prior research. There are important implications for researchers and policy-makers in the findings.