Studying the background Variables and Factors Affecting the Satisfaction of the Residents in the Residential Environment

Residential Satisfaction is one of the most complex issues and the key criterion which has been studied by many urban scholars and also other scientific researchers. It is necessary since it contributes to individuals’ well-being and quality of life. Admittedly, the Residential Satisfaction concept is based on a wide range of expectations, desires and tendencies in order to meet basic and transcendental human needs, and refers to the real experience of people's lives. Satisfaction with the residential environment is, in fact, people's quality of evaluating their living environment and many factors such as personal, physical and social factors influence its level. Hence, evaluation of these factors leading to satisfaction with the residential environment can be used as scales and standards by the city planners, urbanists and architects. It seems that by reviewing the research conducted on resident's satisfaction and its inductive conclusion, one can reach a systematic framework and a comprehensive model to explain the factors affecting this quality. This paper is in search of a theoretical framework to identify and assess background factors and variables affecting residential satisfaction, and to develop a theoretical model to analyze the relationship of each variable with the extent of residents’ satisfaction using a meta-analysis method by comparing the results of previous experimental research. This analysis was undertaken to achieve tangible and clear conclusions. Accordingly, on the one hand it deals with defining satisfaction with the residential area based on the views of experts in the field; and on the other hand, by looking at previous experimental studies, it deals with identifying and analyzing the factors affecting the satisfaction of the residents and offers the proposed model of the research. The results of the research identify that Satisfaction with residential space is a complex phenomenon and depends on multiple factors which includes personal, social and physical factors. Personal variables, independently, are known as the most influential factors affecting different levels of expectations, desires and tendencies of life. Social factors were identified and defined as emotions that are effective in the process of shaping the social dimension of satisfaction. It can be stated that the public's sense toward local community increases in places and is affected by people’s mental perception of the environment. in fact, people feel more satisfied with their local community when it seems supportive, reliable and friendly. The third level of commonality also showed that satisfaction is also influenced by the living conditions and physical environmental factors. If built environment was selected by people and it has a good quality, it will affect judgment of satisfaction of the residential environment. In addition, social and physical factors of residential environments form the real experiences of people from these environments. With respect to the objective of observing the physical environment and mental perception of the social conditions in which one lives, residents will have different actual experience in terms of the environment. Thus, if there is more convergence between individual's expectations with their real experience of the environment, the satisfaction with the residential environment will increase.