Linking crowding, housing inadequacy, and perceived housing stress
This study sought to explain how housing inadequacy affects inhabitants' experiences of dwelling related stress. We defined housing inadequacy as the gap between self reported availability and importance of specific interior features, and we measured stress from self reported perceptions of efficacy or helplessness with regard to the home. From a survey of 1668 community residents, we found that inadequate retreat and lack of dwelling related efficacy each mediated the effect of inadequate comfort upon dwelling related helplessness. Two moderation models, predicting efficacy and helplessness respectively, compared whether respondents reported that their households used all habitable rooms for sleeping. This rooms ratio metric interacted with the more traditional density metric of persons per room; as persons per room increased, respondents in households using all rooms for sleeping had a steeper decrease in efficacy as well as a steeper increase in helplessness. We also explored some methodological issues in describing person environment fit in a demographically heterogeneous sample.