The damages of stigma, the benefits of prestige: Examining the consequences of perceived residential reputations on neighbourhood attachment

This study examines how perceived residential reputations – that is, how people think non-residents assess the reputation of their neighbourhood – affect neighbourhood attachment, including residents’ sense of belonging, local civic membership, social relationships and compliance with social rules and norms in the neighbourhood. We focus on Santiago, the capital city of Chile: a highly segregated context. We use data from the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey (ELSOC, 2016–2019) and information on neighbourhood characteristics. Results show that perceived residential reputations affect neighbourhood attachment, even after adjusting for time-invariant individual heterogeneity and lagged dependent variables. Specifically, perceived stigma reduces residents’ neighbourhood identification, physical rootedness, trust and sociability with neighbours, while positive perceived reputations improve these components of neighbourhood attachment, although to a lesser extent. However, perceived residential reputations do not affect the formation of strong ties between neighbours or local participation, suggesting that residential reputations mainly influence affective components of neighbourhood attachment. We conclude that perceived residential reputations reinforce the influence of individual characteristics and objective neighbourhood conditions in producing diverging patterns of neighbourhood attachment, with broader implications for social inequality in the city.