Determinants Of Environmental Preference By Housing Consumers In Guangzhou, China, Using Analytic Hierarchy Process

This paper analyzes the determinants of housing environmental preference by consumers in Guangzhou, China. Preferences of different housing environments have been well researched by scholars in architecture, urban planning, and urban environmental science. However, few studies shed light on housing environment by measuring physical/tangible and social/intangible attributes with hierarchy models. Based on the literatures on housing environment, preference, satisfaction and housing quality, this study explores the housing environment preference by identifying the environmental attributes which are grouped into three categories: mobility, community facility, and community social capital. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed to estimate the relative importance of those environmental attributes, which are further organized into a hierarchical structure. Housing consumers and property experts in Guangzhou participate in the survey and they represent a wide spectrum of environmental performance demands as well as socio-environmental backgrounds in the sample. Statistical weights of the factors based on their judgments are then generated. It is found that mobility factors, including public traffic network, proximity to workplace, have dominant importance in the housing environment. Social capital factors and facility factors, including sense of safety, medical and health facility, and education facility are also regarded important. Property experts and consumers have diverse perspectives on the demand of end users as they represent different interest groups. Furthermore, different age groups of housing consumers attach different relative importance to the factors studied. This paper develops a method to assess the relative importance of the environment factors in housing preferences, and provides a useful tool in the field of environmental assessment. Instead of measuring the monetary value of different attributes in the market, the findings of this study help to understand the general demand pattern and preferences of consumers in the housing market based on multidimensional values and benefits. It is hoped that the findings will offer more information for urban planners and housing developers from a social and cultural perspective.