Neighborhood Perceptions, Self-rated Health, and Personality Traits: Evidence from Japan

Although earlier studies have demonstrated an association between perceived neighborhood characteristics and self-rated health, these studies did not control for the psychological characteristics of participants, an important consideration when using self-reported data. In this study, we examined how self-rated health is associated with perceived neighborhood characteristics after controlling for personality traits as well as other individual- and area-level covariates. We employed multilevel analysis using microdata collected from a nationwide Internet survey in Japan in 2011 (N = 8,139). When controlling for personality traits, we observed that the odds for reporting poor health in response to negative neighborhood assessments declined but remained highly significant. We obtained similar results when additionally controlling for sense of coherence (SOC) or replacing personality traits with it. We also found no effect of personality traits or SOC on the sensitivity of self-rated health with negative neighborhood assessments.