This study aims to derive priorities for facility improvement projects from the perspective of creating a healing environment to improve the quality of life for vulnerable groups living in aging public rental housing, and to present policy implication...
This study aims to derive priorities for facility improvement projects from the perspective of creating a healing environment to improve the quality of life for vulnerable groups living in aging public rental housing, and to present policy implications by comparing and analyzing differences in perception between experts and policy beneficiaries.
Recently, the aging of public rental housing residents and the increase in single-person households have exacerbated issues such as social isolation, suicide, and lonely deaths. Previous studies both domestically and internationally have confirmed that poor living environments contribute to mental health deterioration and social isolation. Countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States recognize social isolation and loneliness as public health crises and are promoting policy initiatives to improve living environments as part of social prescriptions.
This study considers facility improvement projects in long-term public rental housing as an effective intervention to alleviate social isolation and aims to derive policy alternatives for creating a healing environment. In particular, to reflect the perspectives of beneficiaries from the early stages of the policy process, this study empirically analyzes differences in perceptions among stakeholders based on the policy problem definition approach.
Based on Roger Ulrich's supportive design theory, nine types of facility improvement projects were classified according to three criteria: control, social support, and positive distraction. Subsequently, an AHP survey was conducted with experts and policy beneficiaries to calculate the relative importance and priority of each project type.
The expert group consisted of 17 members, including professors, researchers, and public enterprise practitioners in the field of public rental housing. The policy beneficiary group consisted of 17 employees of permanent rental housing management offices, who were most closely familiar with the living conditions of residents. To ensure the reliability of the survey responses, only responses with a consistency ratio of 0.2 or lower were considered valid and used in the analysis.
According to the AHP analysis results, the expert group assigned relatively high importance to indirect and structural improvement measures such as “welfare and social integration facilities” and “community strengthening.” This result suggests that experts involved in policy formulation and research are accustomed to a system-centered approach.
On the other hand, the policy beneficiary group assigned high importance to direct housing environment improvement items such as “performance and functional improvement” and “minimum housing satisfaction.” This can be interpreted as a tendency to place greater value on resolving residents' actual inconveniences and ensuring basic housing conditions based on practical experience.
This difference in perception can be attributed to differences in framing, which varies depending on how policy issues are perceived. The expert group perceives the problem as institutional flaws or structural limitations and prioritizes mid- to long-term responses, while the policy beneficiary group prioritizes practical response measures based on the inconveniences and experiences of residents in their daily lives.
The difference in perception between the two groups was also confirmed through quantitative analysis. The Mann-Whitney test revealed statistically significant differences (p<0.05) in the “energy conservation” category, while the “welfare and social integration facilities” category showed weak significance (p<0.10). The “community strengthening” category exhibited a small effect size (Cohen's d = 0.29).
Unlike previous discussions on facility improvement projects, which mainly focused on physical environment improvements, this study set the creation of a healing environment as a policy goal and empirically analyzed the differences in perception between experts and policy beneficiaries, who are key actors in the policy-making process. In this regard, the study has academic significance as a basic study that proposes directions for improvement in the overall policy process.
However, there are limitations to generalization due to the composition and size of the sample, and the structural complexity of the AHP technique resulted in survey difficulty issues. Therefore, future studies should complement the reliability of the analysis by conducting qualitative interviews in parallel. Additionally, since the hierarchical components of the AHP technique were set based on the researcher's interpretation, there is a need for follow-up research to establish a more objective and valid classification system.