Residents' Cooperative Behavior in Neighborhood Renewal: Investigating the Role of Psychological and Social Factors

The cooperative behavior of residents plays an important role in the successful implementation of neighborhood renewal projects. However, currently there is a lack of knowledge on the antecedents of residents' cooperative behavior. This paper aims to identify the relationships between residents' cooperative behavior and their psychological and social precursors in neighborhood renewal. A theoretical framework is developed by extending the theory of planned behavior to incorporate new variables drawn from social capital theory. Data from 381 residents in 75 neighborhood renewal projects was collected and was used to test the framework through Structural Equation Modeling. Results reveal positive relationships between residents' intention and their cooperative behavioral actions. Social capital has been proven to have positively effect on cooperative behavioral intention. Moreover, the findings further suggest that gender and age play an important role in the cooperative behavior of residents. This study verifies that incorporating social capital in the TPB model significantly increases its ability to explain resident behavior in neighborhood renewal. Policy implication based on these findings are suggested. The study contributes to a better understanding of residents' cooperative behavior and provides important inputs for the effective design to motivate cooperative behavior in residents of neighborhood renewal projects.