Construction of residential quality assessment system using factor analysis method based on residents' satisfaction survey: case study of Beijing, China

The quality evaluation of urban residence is an important part of urban residents' health and urban sustainable development. In recent years, different evaluation systems related to green buildings have been proposed, but the system for conducting comprehensive quality evaluations of residential areas still needs improvement. Taking Beijing, China, as an example, this study surveyed the residential communities at four chronological intervals and proposes an evaluation system that includes 75 indices to conduct research on and analyze on a total of 60 households in 48 communities using an offline survey; a total of 6834 online questionnaires obtained in the study, and the factor analysis method was used to analyze the residential evaluation system. Through the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test and factor analysis with key contributions of different indices, the following 13 regrouped and renamed indices were created for the new assessment system: ecology, facilities, security, quality of peripheral facilities, kitchen and bathroom facilities, children-friendly, entertainment, thermal quality, room quality, engineering quality, smart operation, building performance, and maintenance. Finally, according to the outcome of the survey completed in Beijing, this study defined five intervals of score to classify the residential communities into highly dissatisfactory, dissatisfactory, average, relatively satisfactory and highly satisfactory ranges. The 48 residential communities in Beijing had an average overall final score (4.18908). This study can facilitate those who would like to develop related standards of residential quality assessment.