Abstract

Four studies were carried out to examine how neighborhood disorder, human-place bonds, relationships among neighbors, and urban quality of life are related and what role blaming nonresidents plays in these relationships. In the first study, local identity was a significant mediator of the relationship between neighborhood disorder and quality of life. In the second study, we found that participants exposed to vignettes describing a disordered neighborhood estimated their potential relationships with neighbors as worse, and their sense of community and quality of life as lower, than participants who were exposed to an ordered environment. We also revealed an indirect path from neighborhood disorder to relationships among neighbors to sense of community to quality of life. The third study confirmed this indirect effect. Additionally, we found the moderated mediation model, which ascribes responsibility for disorder to nonresidents, to be a mediator of the aforementioned path. Sense of community was not a significant mediator of the relationship between neighborhood disorder and quality of life for those who attributed disorder to nonresidents. The fourth study was conducted among inhabitants of two Polish agglomerations: Gdańsk and Łódź. Once again, relationships among neighbors and a sense of community mediated the relationship between neighborhood disorder and quality of life. Interaction of city, disorder and attribution of responsibility is also significant: blaming nonresidents for disorder was related to maintaining a satisfactory sense of community in conditions of high disorder among residents in Gdańsk but not among those in Łódź.

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