The Factors Affecting on Elderly' Life Satisfaction in the Residential Environments

This research is designed to identify factors that affect life satisfaction of the Korean elderly by studying residential environments and individual personalities as independent variables, and life satisfaction of the elderly as a dependent variable. It also includes emotional and instrumental support to describe relations between variables as mediating variables. It utilizes a questionnaire survey as its research method and studies those aged 65 and over living in urban, suburban and rural areas. In addition, regression and path analysis is used to identify casual links between different variables. The results are as follows: (1) Direct factors that impact emotional support are home ownership (direct effect= -.18) and transportation services (.15). That is, those who own their home and have easy access to public transpiration show increased levels of emotional support. (2) Direct factors that affect instrumental support are economic status (direct effect= .311) and living arrangement (.17). In other words, those who are financially stable and live with their children have more instrumental support. (3) Factors linked directly to life satisfaction of the elderly are their age (direct effect= -.10), health status (.19), economic status (.25), region of living (.22) and housing type (.19). (4) Among the mediating variables, emotional support has direct effect (.45) while instrumental support has indirect effect (.16).