Citation

Mei WB, Hsu CY, Ou SJ. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020; 17(8): e2863.

Affiliation

Department of Architecture, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichuang 41349, Taiwan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph17082863

PMID

32326293

Abstract

Community home-based care has become China's main mode of care for the elderly, and the aging of the community public environment has become the focus of attention of all of society. This study uses a questionnaire survey and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) to (i) obtain the relative weights of indicators in the hierarchy structure of an aging-friendly community public environment and (ii) build a complete indicator evaluation system for the aging-friendly community public environment. The research results show that the quasi-side evaluation index framework of the aging-friendly community public environment is composed of four factors (i.e., community facilities, community road system, community environmental function, and community landscape configuration) and 24 evaluation indexes. The weights of the indicators in descending order are "community road system (w = 0.374)", "community facilities (w = 0.310)", "community environmental functions (w = 0.264)", and "community landscape configuration (w = 0.052)". The research results show that "community road systems" and "community facilities" are important indicators of the aging-friendliness of a community public environment. "Community environmental function" is an important supplemental factor of the aging-friendliness of a community public environment. "Community landscape configuration" involves improving the construction of the community public environment from the perspective of landscaping. Among all indicator levels, the weights of "Community road floor slip resistance" (w = 0.1795), "Daily health and medical facilities (w = 0.1181)", and "Provide social interaction functions (w = 0.1067)" are ranked the highest. These results show that ensuring the physical and mental health of the elderly in the community is a core criterion for evaluating the aging-friendliness of a public environment in the community. In this study, an index evaluation weight system is established to clarify the best approach to constructing an aging-friendly community public environment in accordance with previous standard specifications. This system can further clarify the scientific method for evaluating aging-friendly public environments built in the past and can serve as a reference for the practical world.

Language: en

Keywords

FAHP; aging-friendly; community public environment