EStructural Equation Modeling of Factors Affecting the Realization of an Elderly-Friendly City(Case Study of Ahvaz)

According to the approach of the World Health Organization, elderly-friendly cities include those urban spaces in which the distribution of public services is such that it is most appropriate to the needs and limitations of the elderly. According to the statistics, the city of Ahvaz, like the whole country, is moving towards the aging of the population and old age.

The present research is applied-theoretical in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in nature and method with a survey approach.

As a result, there is a difference between the indicators of the elderly-friendly city at the level of 95% confidence. In other words, the indicators of the elderly-friendly city from the participants’ perspective did not have the same priority. Accordingly, the social status index with an average rank of 1.81 has the highest score, and the health services index with a score of 1.06 has the lowest score. The regional results also show that the significance level obtained from the Friedman test is less than 0.05. There is a difference between the elderly-friendly city indicators in the eight districts of Ahvaz at the confidence level of 95%. In other words, the elderly-friendly city indicators have not had the same priority from the point of view of the respondents living in the regions. So, Zones 1 and 8, with the average rank of 2.88 and 2.79, have the highest rank, and Zone 6, with the score of 2.21, has the lowest. Analysis of structural equation model to investigate the effect of indicators of the elderly-friendly city of Ahvaz according to the coefficients of determination (R2) showed that the changes in the variable are significantly dependent on changes in independent variables of the research. Due to being positive Subscription index and redundancy index and three values of 0.01, 0.25, 0.36, which are introduced as low, intermediate, and high GOF values and obtaining 0.50 for GOF, the appropriate fit of the model was confirmed.

The model explained to investigate the factors affecting the realization of the elderly-friendly city of Ahvaz also showed that the changes of the dependent variable depend to a considerable extent on the changes of the independent variables of the research. In other words, independent research variables can explain up to 50% of the dependent variable, indicating the proposed model’s desirability.