Community Life Surveys

The Theoretical Model

Satisfaction with acquisition, possession, and consumption can significantly predict life satisfaction (controlling for satisfaction with other life domains such as satisfaction with job, financial situation, health, education, friendships, leisure, neighborhood, community, and spiritual). 

Individuals hold two distinct sets of beliefs about shopping activities: Positive beliefs regarding the degree to which shopping contributes to quality of life (shopping well-being), and negative beliefs related to the degree to which shopping activities result in overspending time, effort, and money (shopping ill-being).

Conceptualization (and operationalization) of mall image predicts mall attitude, mall patronage, and word-of-mouth communication. Five dimensions of the mall image (access, atmosphere, price/promotion, cross-category assortment, and within-category assortment) predict shopper behavior in terms of mall attitude, mall patronage, and word-of-mouth communications. In other words, a mall characterized as high in terms of access, atmosphere, price/promotion, cross-category assortment, and within-category assortment should also be positively evaluated by shoppers, and that the same shoppers should patronize that mall more frequently and refer that mall to their friends and family members more so than a mall perceived as low on the same dimensions.

Housing well-being refers to the home resident’s cumulative positive and negative affect associated with the purchase, preparation, ownership, use, and maintenance of the current home, and the selling of the previous home. Housing well-being occurs when the home is bought with the least amount of effort (purchase), the home is prepared for use to meet the needs of the new occupants (preparation), ownership signals status and enhances the home owner’s financial portfolio (ownership), the home serves the housing needs of the residents (use), the maintenance, renovation, and repair in the home are minimal, least costly, and effortless (maintenance), and the sale of the home is transacted with the least amount of effort and most financial gain (selling).

The model posits that PQOLI is mostly influenced by satisfaction with product purchase, preparation, ownership, consumption, and maintenance experiences. In turn, the model also posits that with satisfaction with purchase, preparation, ownership, consumption, and maintenance are influenced by a set of consumption experiences.

The personal transportation consumer wellbeing measure is based on two theoretical notions borrowed from quality-of-life research, namely bottom-up spillover and need satisfaction (see Sirgy, 2001, 2002 for literature reviews). Researchers have long recognized that the psychological life space is multi-dimensional. That is, people experience life events in relation to major activities (e.g., work, leisure, transportation, housing, dating, engaging in religious activities, shopping, eating, and socializing, among others). Affective responses to events related to any major activity are stored in a life domain reflecting that activity. For example, people react emotionally to many events related to driving their vehicles (major activity) and store the positive and negative affect in a life domain reflecting personal transportation. Within each life domain, positive affect is enhanced (and negative affect is reduced) with satisfaction of the full spectrum of human developmental needs. That is, satisfaction in a particular domain is maximized when the person experiences satisfaction in relation to safety, economic, family, social, esteem, actualization, knowledge, and aesthetics needs – the full spectrum of human developmental needs. The greater the need satisfaction, the more positive affect (the less negative affect) accumulates in that domain.

The cell phone plays an important role in the following life domains: social life, leisure life, family life, education life, health and safety life, love life, work life, and financial life. The perceived QOL impact of cell phone is determined by the perceived impact of cell phones in those life domains.

Many scientists and scholars have acknowledged that the Internet does indeed influence the quality of life (e.g., Cairncross, 1997; Israel, 2000; DiMaggio et al., 2001). It does so by providing the user with a host of benefits in the context of many life domains (e.g., social life, work life, leisure life). The use of the Internet also adversely influences the quality of life of Internet users. As with Internet benefits, costs also could be identified in the context of various life domains. The perception of Internet benefits and costs within each life domain affects the perception of how the Internet impacts the user’s well being in relation to that life domain. Similarly, the user’s perception of the overall quality-of-life impact of the Internet is determined by the user’s perception of the Internet’s impact in the various life domains.

In this model three constructs are involved: life satisfaction, satisfaction in consumer life, and satisfaction in other life domains. Life satisfaction refers to an aggregate sense of well-being developed in response to personal and environmental influences. This aggregate sense of well-being is an attitude state or overall satisfaction resulting from satisfaction with a variety of life domains such as consumer life, family life, work life, leisure life, love life, spiritual life, financial life, and community life. One particular life domain we are concerned about in this research is the consumer life domain and specifically satisfaction with consumer life. We call this construct overall consumer satisfaction. It is an attitude state representing level of fulfillment of wants or needs gained from experiential interactions with retail establishments in the local area.