Information Barriers, Housing Searches, and Residential Satisfaction: A Study of Mainland China Students in Hong Kong
Author
Start Page / End Page
Volume
Issue Number
Year
Publication
Zheng Chang
343 / 365
21
3
2018
International Real Estate Review
Abstract
There are few empirical studies that study the effects of different housing search methods on housing outcomes. This paper addresses this research gap by surveying students from Mainland China in Hong Kong to measure residential satisfaction in the use of three different housing search strategies: social media, housing agents, and personal social networks (friends and relatives). We use a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the results and find that students who use social networks to find houses have a significantly higher level of residential satisfaction than those who use social media as a search method. However, using a housing agent does not significantly affect residential satisfaction, although both the number of houses viewed and time spent during a search have small effects on increasing residential satisfaction.
Keywords
Housing Search, Residential Satisfaction, Structural Equation Model