The effects of neighborhood environment on migrants' mental health in old and dilapidated communities of megacities: A case study in Wuhan city

In recent years, along with the continuous promotion of urban regeneration, the scale of urban villages in megacities has dropped sharply. Thus, a large number of migrants have moved to old and dilapidated communities with low rent and poor quality. It is urgent to examine the neighborhood effects in such areas to improve the quality of urban space and the public health of vulnerable groups. Taking Wuhan as a case, this paper integrates multi-source data such as questionnaire, image, text and geographic data, and adopts deep learning and multiple-group structural equation modeling to explore the effects of neighborhood environment on migrants' mental health. The results show that: (1) Compared with newly-built communities, old and dilapidated communities have poorer physical environment quality, but higher living convenience, closer neighborhood relations and more serious social discrimination. There are significant differences in livelihood issues between the two types of communities. (2) After controlling socio-economic and demographic characteristics, neighborhood physical and social environments have a significant impact on migrants' mental health, and residential satisfaction is the key environmental psychological factor. Low public transit station density, low social discrimination, and high neighborhood familiarity have positive impacts on migrants' mental health by improving their residential satisfaction. (3) The analysis of community heterogeneity shows that physical environments mainly affect the mental health of migrants in old and dilapidated communities, while social environments play a decisive role in newly-built communities. The health effects and environmental psychological mechanisms of greening rate, community space quality and social discrimination are significantly different between old and dilapidated communities and newly-built communities. This study contributes to understanding the health effects of megacity neighborhood environments and providing scientific support for building inclusive communities.