Community Satisfaction

The term community satisfaction refers to people's subjective evaluations of their own well-being as measured by how well their local community meets their personal needs. The lives of human beings today are dominated by a mass consumer-oriented economy and its concomitant culture. Those who can actively engage in this consumer culture typically have the highest sense of general well-being, and thus they also tend to be more satisfied with their community than those who do not actively engage.

Though high levels of community satisfaction have traditionally been associated more with rural than with urban communities, the distinctions between these two have blurred as communities themselves have evolved, increasingly embracing mass consumer culture. Specifically, due to transportation improvements and the development of “edge cities” (strip malls and shopping centers at major transportation intersections), the local community has become less important to the average mobile American than was the case fifty years ago.

Whether consumer needs are met in the community of residence or elsewhere, people whose needs can be met tend to have higher levels of community satisfaction than those whose needs go unsatisfied. The community is a base of domestic operations for most, but people have a greater allegiance to the demands of a mass consumer economy than to their local community. Thus, the contemporary irony of community satisfaction is that the local community is no longer the focus of people's sense of satisfaction, but it remains the place that this satisfaction is manifested. Consequently, many of those with the highest levels of community satisfaction may paradoxically have the lowest levels of allegiance to any particular community. This complexity in the experience of community is predictable in today's modern consumer society, where mobility is often rewarded more generously than is “staying put.”