Investigation the relationship between physical urban environmental Quality and Citizen’s Perception of Stress (Case study: Isfahan City)

There are growing concerns worldwide about the interdependencies between city life and mental well-being. Perceived stress is a mental disorder induced by urbanization. Today, the quality of the environment that is built and the neighborhood in which residents live is recognized as the main source of stress. In addition, recent research in the context of psychology suggests that urban life is stressful.The main purpose of this research is to evaluate the relationship between neighborhood quality and perceived stress. For that purpose, two neighborhoods in the city of Isfahan, Iran are selected.

Theoretical Framework:

Perceived stress is affected by numerous factors such as individual characteristics, lifestyles, life events, and job variables. The physical quality of the built environment is a factor which is generally underestimated (Beil & Hanes, 2013). Green space is a physical quality of the built environment which affects mental health, and decreases residents’ stress (Roe et al., 2013; Wolch et al., 2014). Another environmental variable which affects the mental health of residents is the transportation pattern. The walkability and bikeability of a neighborhood is strongly correlated with the residents’ mental health (Nieuwenhuijsen et al., 2016). There is a great deal of evidence that the accessibility of a walking or bicycling route is significantly effective on the general health of residents (Frank & Engelke, 2001). In addition, availability of public spaces is another variable of physical quality which affects residents’ mental health (Knöll et al., 2018). Public spaces provide opportunities for residents to interact with each other. On the other hand, the increase in interaction among residents leads to a rise in their confidence, and, eventually, improves the physiological capability of residents when confronted with changes. Finally, appropriate physiological reactions decrease stress.A variable which can be considered here is environmental security. Studies have demonstrated that the violence present in urban communities and residential neighborhoods threatens mental health, and deeply affects psychological behavior (Clark et al., 2008). Moreover, another variable of environment quality is environmental comfort. For instance, living in neighborhoods which are highly polluted, whether with noise or light pollution, influences the sleep quality of residents, and eventually increases stress. In addition, non-standard houses with improper cooling or heating systems can influence the variables of mental health (Hale et al., 2013). The conceptual model of this paper expresses the relationship between the built environment variable and the mental health variable. In this model, environment beauty, functional attraction, physical form, and environmental comfort indicate the quality of the built environment as independent variables. Moreover, perceived stress is evaluated as a dependent variable from the viewpoint of mental health.

In this study, two questionnaires were used. One is the researcher-made questionnaire of built environment quality, and the other is the perceived stress scale (PSS-14). Two neighborhoods were selected for the study. The survey was conducted via face-to-face structured interviews, and yielded a total of 434 valid samples. Then, 203 individuals in the Moftabad neighborhood and 231 in the Mardavij neighborhood filled out the questionnaires as participants. The data has been analysed using normal and partial correlation coefficients and linear regression.

The descriptive statistics on the dependent and independent variables in the examined neighborhoods were compared. Moftabad and Mardavij scored 0.78 and 2.98 in average on environmental beauty. The functional attraction in Moftabad and Mardavij was 0.77 and 2.81, respectively. The median scores on the variables of physical form and environmental comfort were 0.71 and 1.58 in Moftabad and 2.94 and 2.92 in Mardavij. In fact, all the environmental variables were scored on significantly lower by the Moftabad neighborhood than by Mardavij. The total scores on built environment quality were 0.96 in Moftabad and 2.91 in Mardavij. According to the results, it is concluded that the dependent variable, i.e. the level of perceived stress, is higher in the Moftabad neighborhood than in the Mardavij neighborhood. The median scores of stress are 2.07 in Moftabad and 1.04 in Mardavij.The findings indicate significant inverse relationships between the independent and dependent variables of the research. When the control variables are considered, however, the relationship is preserved, but its intensity decreases.Based on the results, the significance level of F-statistic is 0.000 in all the three models. This finding, which is obtained through regression analysis and analysis of variance, indicates that the conceptual model of the research is well-fitted. In Moftabad, two variables (environmental beauty and environmental comfort) are capable of predicting the changes in the dependent variable. In this case, the standard coefficients of the above variables are -0.537 and -0.181, respectively. These statistics mean that environmental beauty predicts 53.7%, and environmental comfort predicts 18.1% of the changes in perceived stress in Moftabad. In the Mardavij neighborhood, environmental beauty, functional attraction, and environmental comfort exhibit the highest capability of predicting the dependent variable. They predict 22.6%, 28.9%, and 14.3% of the changes in perceived stress, respectively. Moreover, in the proposed model for the full sample, environmental beauty, functional attraction, and environmental comfort predict 45.9%, 26.8%, and 24.4% of the changes in perceived stress, respectively.In the second phase of modeling the changes in the dependent variable, the relationship between the built environment quality, i.e. the independent variable, and perceived stress, i.e. the dependent variable, was evaluated. Moreover, three models were proposed in this phase. According to the obtained results, ANOVA provides one significant F-statistic for each of the three models. The adjusted R-squared of the proposed model is greater in Moftabad than in the Mardavij neighborhood. On that basis, it can be stated that the effect of the built environment on stress is more in Moftabad residents than those of the Mardavij neighborhood. Based on the standard coefficient (Beta), the built environment quality of Moftabad predicts 67% of the changes in perceived stress, while the value of this variable in Mardavij is 46.4%. Finally, the built environment quality determines 78.3% of the changes in perceived stress in the full sample.

The results of the present study introduced new aspects of the environmental factors effective on perceived stress. The main finding is that cities serve as powerful forces today in shaping the mental health of citizens. Therefore, treatment of mental disorders requires an interdisciplinary approach. In other words, the living environments of individuals, along with many personal, social, economic, personality, and family issues, are the major sources of mental disorders. To treat mental disorders, therefore, psychologists should interact with urban planners. Lastly, we conducted this research in one Iranian city, i.e. Isfahan. Researchers studying other cities and countries may report different results. The conclusion agreed on by all researchers, however, is that the relationship between urban planning and psychologists should be enhanced more than ever before to reduce the negative impacts of urban neighborhoods on mental disorders.