Examining the Effects of Community Satisfaction and Attachment on Individual Well-Being*

Using data collected in a general population survey from a random sample of individuals in four communities in Pennsylvania, I examine the effects of community satisfaction and attachment on self-assessed individual well-being. I find substantial support for the hypothesis that satisfaction with the community and attachment to the community are associated independently and positively with individual well-being. Bivariate and multiple correlation/regression analyses reveal that greater community satisfaction and attachment result in higher levels of perceived well-being. Although the total explained variances of the community satisfaction and attachment measures are small, they do not differ substantially from various social and demographic factors that have been found to be associated with well-being. I propose possible implications of these findings and make suggestions for future research. An extensive literature has investigated satisfaction and attachment at the neighborhood and community levels of analysis. The concepts of community satisfaction and attachment have been used primarily as dependent variables. The objective of most studies that have treated satisfaction and attachment as dependent has been to identify their determinants. Although justifiably worthy, such studies have suffered from confusion concerning levels of analysis, have provided few definitive findings on the most important predictors of satisfaction and attachment, and have produced little information on the implications of varying levels of community satisfaction and/or attachment for individualand community-level issues (Theodori 2000). Furthermore, few researchers have offered persuasive arguments expressing the advantages of continued efforts at examining community satisfaction and attachment. In the early 1980s, Goudy and Ryan (1982:259) stated “[L]ittle is known about the consequences of different levels of community attachment on either residents or the community itself.” They asserted that research was needed to examine how community attachment contributed to factors such as quality of life, community decision-making processes and development efforts, and the mainRural Sociology 66(4), 2001, pp. 618–628 Copyright © 2001 by the Rural Sociological Society * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Rural Sociological Society, held in Chicago in August 1999. I wish to thank Al Luloff for use of the data and for helpful comments on the paper. Address correspondence to Gene L. Theodori, Department of Rural Sociology, Texas A&M University, 2125 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-2125; [email protected]. tenance of community groups and institutions. Today, approximately two decades later, the situation, as manifested in the extant literatures on community attachment and the related community satisfaction, remains very much the same. The purpose of this paper is to extend the literature on community satisfaction and attachment. Specifically, I examine the effects of these phenomena on one individual-level measure: perceived individual well-being. In doing so, I test the hypothesis that both satisfaction and attachment are associated independently and positively with individual well-being. Before describing the data, measurement, and findings, I summarize the contemporary literature on this topic.