• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1-10
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• 2009

Rapid social change affects residential environments and this in turn creates new stimuli to which people have to adapt. These stimuli have been seen to increase stress levels. Therefore, dwellers in these environments try to reduce stress through various methods. The purpose of this paper is to: 1) identify the general trends of coping styles about residential environmental stress, 2) analyze the differences in socio-demographic characteristics and how the physical characteristics of buildings affect stress, find out how personal backgrounds affect stress levels and the ability to get rid of environmental-related stress. The subjects in this study consisted of people living in multi-family housing in Gwangju. The city is divided into 5 districts and used quota sampling. 324 housewives were surveyed from the households by self-administered questionnaires. The survey was conducted in December, 2006, after the questionnaire was revised based on the results of preliminary survey. After all the questionnaires were collected, the data was coded and analyzed using the SPSS 12.0 program. This study confirmed that the manner in which those in multi-family housing coped with stress. Especially, we need a policy which seriously considers residents who are of low social-economic standing. As well as being exposed to residential environmental stress, they also have no means to deal with it. The age of a building had a strong impact on coping styles about residential environmental stress. We have to make special studies about the adaptive reuse of buildings for the reduction of residential environmental stress and to greatly improve coping styles. In conclusion, it emphasized the importance of education, information, and economic aid. Reasonable housing management would surely lead to a rise in residential satisfaction and the promotion of residential welfare.