Reputation, neighbourhoods and behaviour

Abstract

In recent years attention of both academics and policymakers alike for neighbourhood reputations has increased greatly. This rise in interest is related in part to the need among policymakers to understand what types of neighbourhoods are popular living environments, what types are not (and why), and what types of neighbourhoods are most likely to acquire a negative reputation. In academic literature, attention has been paid to both the concept of reputation and the material and psychological consequences of living in a neighbourhood with a poor reputation. Conceptually, reputations can be expected to be related to neighbourhood characteristics. Evidence of this relationship is limited to mostly descriptive accounts of poor neighbourhoods. Other studies have investigated the consequences of living in stigmatised neighbourhoods on the psychological wellbeing of residents and on the material consequences. There has been little research that explicitly studies how neighbourhood reputation affects the behaviour of residents, although there have been indications that residents adjust their behaviour according to the reputation of their neighbourhood. Two types of responses were studied: the intention to leave the neighbourhood and expression of concerns with the neighbourhood through residents’ participation in the neighbourhood. To gain a better understanding of the reputation concept and its relationship with neighbourhood characteristics, we collected our own survey data regarding neighbourhood reputations from 1,389 residents in 24 neighbourhoods in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The results showed that residents and non-residents differed markedly in their ratings of individual neighbourhoods. There is quite a strong relationship between neighbourhood characteristics and reputation; the social characteristics of a neighbourhood (socio-economic status and ethnicity) are particularly strongly linked to its reputation, whereas physical and functional factors are ? particularly among other city residents ? less closely related Furthermore, our study has shown ? through logistic regression modeling ? that the behaviour of residents is influenced by the reputation of the neighbourhood. Residents who hold a negative perception of their neighbourhood’s reputation are more likely to plan to leave the neighbourhood than are residents who hold a positive view of the reputation. This effect exists can be explained by looking at the importance of neighbourhood status for the personal identity and self-worth of individuals. If people believe their individual status suffers from membership of a group (in this case, based on their residential neighbourhood), they may decide to disassociate themselves from this group by moving out of their neighbourhood. We also found that people who hold a negative reputation perception are less likely to attend city-initiated meetings concerning the neighbourhood. These results are important, because they give insight into not only the mechanism responsible for changes in the socio-spatial structure of the urban landscape, but also into the stability of urban neighbourhoods. We therefore suggest that future research on moving intentions and neighbourhood participation should include perceived reputation as an important variable. After all, we have shown that doing so enhances our understanding of the mechanisms that induce people to move out of their neighbourhood (in addition to other important variables).