The Social Neighborhood

This article analyzes both theoretically and empirically the relationship between owner-occupants' housing maintenance behavior and their social relationships within their neighborhoods. This "social dimension" of the neighborhood is posited as affecting maintenance through pressures for conforming to group housing standards. Hypotheses are derived from this theory and empirical tests are conducted using a sample of homeowners from Wooster, Ohio, in 1975. Through factor analysis a number of variables measuring an individual homeowner's social "attachment" to neighborhood are reduced to two dimensions: "commonality" and "integration." These factors are aggregated to form neighborhood levels of "cohesiveness." Both sets of attachment and cohesiveness factors are employed as independent variables in a multiple-regression analysis of maintenance frequency and expenditures, where the effects of homeowner characteristics, structural features, and physical and demographic dimensions of the neighborhood are controlled for. Results show that there is a significant relationship between both individual and aggregate measures of the social neighborhood and maintenance, but only when there exists a high aggregate level of neighborhood cohesiveness.