The Influence of Emotional Health on the Activity Characteristics of the Elderly and the Selection of Environmental Quality Factors in Residential Areas

The environment in urban residential areas is the main field of daily activity for the elderly. Environmental renewal has played a significant role in improving residents’ quality of life and promoting physical and mental health. However, there is a general tendency that more attention has been focused on the environment during environmental renewal but not the residents. There is a continued lack of discussion on the emotional status of the elderly and its impact on outdoor activities. Based on the investigation of four types of typical residential environments in the Dalian residential area, a hierarchical linear model (HLM) has been constructed to reveal the influence of the emotional status of elderly persons on their activity characteristics and the selection of environmental quality factors. The results show that the distribution of older people with different emotional statuses varies among different residential types. The proportion of positive emotion is relatively high in the flat land in rows category, and the activity characteristics are significantly different under different emotional statuses. Among the four kinds of residential environments, which are (flat land in rows, flat land enclosed, slope, and mountainous) the environmental quality factors that have the highest impact on the emotional status of the elderly are greening quality (0.395), acoustic environment (0.167), environmental cleanliness (0.269), and greening quality (0.230), respectively. In the mountainous type, the impact of environmental quality factors on the emotional status of the elderly is the highest (39.7%), and the impact contributions of the other three environmental types are 23.3%, 8.9% and 20.1%, respectively. These research results provide helpful guidance for the scientific community about practical implementation of residential environmental renewal for the elderly.