Identifying and Prioritizing Factors Affecting Urban Happiness in Ahvaz

Happiness is one of the most essential innate desires and mental needs of human and because of its major impact on community health and well-being, it has long occupied people's minds. Today, it is also part of the efforts and costs of citizens to achieve happiness, vitality, and lively spaces (especially in urban settings). At the end of the 20th century, the issue of human happiness and vitality was discussed as one of the important issues. Because one of the problems of societies is the negligence of happiness and vitality, and consequently, the increase of mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression especially in the cities. Expanding urbanization and increasing social issues in Ahvaz endanger citizens’ mental, social and subsequent wellbeing and specify the need to address the status of the citizens’ happiness based on appropriate indicators in this city. Ahvaz as a metropolis faces many problems in the form of urban life such as migration and emergence and expansion of suburbs (about % 40 of Ahvaz), high rate of crime, the heterogeneous population structure of the city and the presence of multiple ethnicities which sometimes lead to ethnic challenges, special weather conditions of Khuzestan province and Ahvaz city (the existence of dust phenomena can have health hazards on the health of citizens including respiratory and heart diseases, etc.), migration (motivation and wave of tendency to migrate among middle classes or individuals and patients with a weak immune system). Therefore, in the city of Ahvaz, the environmental vitality of the citizens is recognized as an important issue becoming more and more important as the urbanization process develops and urban problems increase. In this regard, it is necessary to extract and design new components and indicators to measure the level of happiness of citizens.

The methodology of research is descriptive-analytical. Initially, key variables explaining vitality were extracted from the subject and background. Then, the Delphi method was used to gather the experts' opinions and prioritize their consensus criteria. To analyze and prioritize the environments affecting the happiness of Ahvaz citizens, the similarity model to the fuzzy ideal option was used. The statistical population of this study is experts (including university professors, municipal and urban experts in Ahvaz ...). Due to the lack of theoretical framework and insufficient knowledge of the number and characteristics of the statistical population and considering the nature and purpose of the research sampling method, which is mainly based on qualitative-heuristic and expert-oriented approach, a sample of 30 experts was considered.  

  Based on findings experts identified various indicators that affect happiness. Indicators were categorized into economic, socio-behavioral, physical, leisure, political-administrative, natural environment, and ecological, mental-perceptual, and religious beliefs. Analysis of the priorities of the environments affecting the happiness of Ahvaz's citizens shows that the natural environment and ecosystem ranked first with 0.5443 points. Priority of this indicator in Ahvaz is due to the city environmental challenges such as air pollution (dust pollution, air pollution from industries), waste management challenge, and water pollution (poor quality). This raises concerns of Ahvaz's citizens. The existence of dust in Ahvaz city has affected the health of citizens (respiratory, heart disease, etc.). Economic environment factors with a score of 0.5347 had the second priority. Priority of this indicator is due to the average unemployment rate in Ahvaz (26.5%), which according to the official average of Iran (12.75%), shows general conditions in Ahvaz city in this regard. In addition, the share of informal employment in Ahwaz is 60.7%. According to these statistics, the labor market situation is bad for both men and women. Leisure environment with a score of 0.5346 had the third priority for creating and enhancing the happiness for citizens. Factors related to physical, socio-behavioral, mental-perceptual, political-administrative and religious-belief environments were scored as 0.596, 0.520, 0.5174, 0.5168 and 0.4984, respectively, as fourth to eighth rankings. Based on this prioritization, we can plan for the criteria and enhancement of happiness in Ahvaz.