Influence of Housing Resettlement on the Subjective Well-Being of Disaster-Forced Migrants: An Empirical Study in Yancheng City

Abstract

As natural disasters have occurred frequently in recent years, disaster-induced migration has become inevitable. People normally attach great importance to the speed and results of post-disaster reconstruction while ignoring the subjective well-being (SWB) of disaster victims, which represents their quality of life and emotional conditions. Based on a questionnaire survey of 256 respondents from Yancheng’s 17 centralised resettlement communities established after a hurricane in 2016, we used ordinal logistic regression models to discuss the SWB of disaster-induced migrants and its main influencing factors. We found that the SWB of disaster-induced migrants is influenced by resettlement housing conditions and community built and social environments. In light of the housing resettlement conditions, the findings show that disaster migrants are likely to feel happier if they are satisfied with the housing resettlement allocation mode, housing resettlement quality and the living space, and the more housing expenditure related to the resettlement is, the less happy they tend to be. In regard to the community environment, it is found that disaster migrants’ evaluation of community facilities and participation does not have a significant impact on their happiness, but the more highly rated community hygiene and the cadre–mass relationship are, the happier they tend to be.