Community assets and local perceptions: are there objective–subjective gaps in British neighbourhoods?

Community assets in neighbourhoods can support peoples’ health and quality of life. The availability of ‘objective’ measures of community resources, based upon quantitative secondary data for small areas, have expanded significantly in recent decades. However, individual perceptions of local environments may differ from objective data measures. This study assesses whether objective neighbourhood measures of community assets predict individual residents’ perceptions of the community resources in their locality. It assess a range of different types of community resources including measures of social cohesion, safety, air quality, health services and public transport and retail services. Additionally, it examines whether the degree to which objective and subjective measures of community assets align varies with individual age and socioeconomic status, degree of neighbourhood deprivation and urban/rural location.

This study uses survey responses from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) ‘Understanding Society’ to measure individuals’ evaluations of community assets in their localities in Britain. The analysis links the residential neighbourhood of these survey respondents to neighbourhood data for Lower Super Output Areas in England and Wales and Data Zones in Scotland. Neighbourhood measures of local characteristics are indicated for social cohesion by the Social Fragmentation Index, for safety by the Crime Domain of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation Crime, for air quality by DEFRA UK Air Data and for access to services by Department for Transport and Transport Scotland journey time statistics. The analyses compares the relationship between objective and subjective measures of community assets using multivariate regression, first among all respondents and then stratified by individual age and socioeconomic status and neighbourhood deprivation level and urban/rural status.