Does the Multi-Scale Built Environment Impact on Residents’ Subjective Well-Being?

Previous studies have demonstrated that the built environment has a significant impact on individual subjective well-being (SWB). However, the majority of these studies primarily examined the impacts of community-level environments on subjective well-being, with limited exploration of the influence of multi-scale environments. This study addresses this gap by utilizing questionnaire surveys and built environment data to examine the effects of built environments at the housing, neighborhood, and community scales on subjective well-being through a multiple regression model (specifically, a hierarchical regression). The results show that environmental variables at the housing scale, neighborhood scale, and community scale can significantly improve the explanatory power of life satisfaction (LS). The findings reveal that the explanatory power of environmental variables on life satisfaction exhibits a diminishing trend from proximate to distal scales. It was found that, in terms of the housing scale, the housing construction environment and quality and the increase in per capita housing area positively contribute to residents’ life satisfaction. At the neighborhood scale, a comfortable environment and enhanced facilities are conducive to improving residents’ life satisfaction, whereas the evaluation of property management and services is linked to reduced life satisfaction. At the community scale, the increase in building density (BD), functional mix density (FMD), road intersection density (RID), and bus stop density (BSD) is not conducive to enhancing residents’ life satisfaction. However, higher bus line density (BLD) is positively correlated with the improvement of residents’ life satisfaction. These findings suggest that in urban community planning and management, attention should be paid not only to housing-scale environmental elements but also to neighborhood-scale environmental elements, and they emphasize the rational planning of community scale environments to enhance residents’ subjective well-being.