What neighborhood environment configuration can alleviate depressive symptoms in older adults: a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

The neighborhood is a regular living and activity space for older adults. It is important to identify neighborhood environmental factors that can alleviate depression in the older adults to improve their health. However, existing literature does not consider the complex interdependencies among key neighborhood environmental factors. This study employs fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to explore how configurations of neighborhood environmental conditions alleviate depressive symptoms in Chinese older adults. The data is derived from the 2020 China Family Panel Study (CFPS), a nationally representative survey. The final sample consisted of 4,697 participants aged 60 and above. Condition variables included community facilities, the surrounding housing environment, neighborhood safety, neighborhood relations, and neighborhood assistance. The fsQCA procedure entailed operationalizing condition variables, calibrating variables, conducting necessity analysis to evaluate single conditions, performing sufficiency analysis to identify configurations of conditions, and interpreting the resulting configurations. The results show that three different neighborhood environment configurations can help reduce depressive symptoms in older Chinese individuals. The first configuration requires a combination of neighborhood safety, good neighborhood relations, and neighborhood assistance. The second configuration involves amalgamating optimal community facilities, high-quality neighborhood relations, and neighborhood assistance. These research results deepen the current understanding of neighborhood environment configurations to alleviate depressive symptoms in older adults, offer important implications for theory and practice, and set new directions for the construction of age-friendly neighborhoods.