Keywords: N.A.
Loneliness amongst young adults has become a significant problem of the past few years.
Loneliness has negative effects on an individual, both physical and mental. It can lead to
feelings of not belonging, emptiness, sadness, and fear. In severe cases it can lead to
depression, alcoholism, and increased mortality risk. It is therefore not only a problem on a
personal scale but also on a society level. Loneliness can be categorized into ‘emotional
versus social loneliness’ and ‘state versus trait loneliness’. Herein, emotional loneliness
refers to the lack of intimate relationships, whereas social loneliness pertains to the lack of a
broad and diverse social network. State loneliness is a temporary feeling caused by
situational factors, whilst trait loneliness is a general feeling of loneliness. The research aims
to explore the influence of social and physical environment factors on the emotional state
loneliness of young adults, aged 18-25. Herein, the role of the activity setting in the built
environment is of interest. The activity setting refers to the environment in which a certain
activity takes place. Both the social and physical environment is addressed.
The relationship between a person’s loneliness and the built environment is a complex
issue, influenced by multiple layers of characteristics. Therefore, a social-ecological model
has been introduced. It consists out of five layers: individual, household, social environment,
physical environment, and external factors. Each of these layers contain multiple variables
that could influence the feeling of emotional loneliness. The individual layer includes
personal factors like age, gender, and personality traits. The household layer considers
socio-demographic variables and household composition. The social environment layer
examines the influence of friends, social media, the sense of community, the activity type,
and the company a person is in. The physical environment layer includes factors like green
spaces, facilities, aesthetics, and transportation. The external layer comprises influences
that are present, but are out of a person’s influence, such as the weather. The study focuses
on the momentary experience of emotional loneliness of individuals and its relationship to
the social environment, physical environment, and external factors. Additionally, the model
will be controlled for the ‘baseline’ characteristics such as the individual, household, and
social environments layer.
The aim of the research is to get insight in the momentary emotional loneliness of young
adults. To measure the feeling of loneliness, several measurement scales are considered,
but the ‘de Jong Gierveld’ scale is selected, due to its distinction of social and emotional
loneliness. Both loneliness types will be measured during the research, as they influence on
another.
For the gathering of momentary data, the experience sampling method (ESM) is used. EMS
is a longitudinal study method that gathers real-time data. This can, for example, be done by
prompting the participants on an application on their phone. The participants each were
requested to fill in an 8-minute baseline survey covering the personal characteristics,
followed by short 2-minute momentary surveys, twice a day for the course of a week. The
gathered data will be clustered on ‘id’ as one participant fills in the momentary survey at
multiple moments. To process the clustered data, the mixed effects regression model
(MRM) is used.
The surveys were distributed mainly through student networks and social media, targeting
individuals between the ages of 18 and 25. A total of 43 participants completed the surveys,
resulting in 393 data points. In the collected data it stood out that most of the participants
were male, part- or full-time students, most of which in higher education. For the
momentary experiences, most of the activities included studying, relaxing, social gatherings,
working and eating, primarily executed alone or with friends. The locational factors were
generally rated high, except from smell, diversity in activities, natural elements, and
cleanliness, all of which had more varying scores.
After the basic data preparation, bivariate analyses were conducted to control for the
assumption necessary for the execution of an MRM. Additionally, the relationships between
the independent variables and the dependent variables were checked within each social-ecological layer. Due to high correlation, two variables were removed from the dataset. In
the significance check some variables were deemed insignificant, however because these
are necessary either as control variable or variable of interest, they remain in the model.
The gathered data has an intra-class correlation (ICC) of 0.53, suggesting that the use of a
mixed model due to clustering is beneficial. As per the survey design, the clustering variable
is ‘id’. By following a top-down method, the ‘optimal model’ with two random variables and
an R-value of 0.519 is obtained.
The aim of the thesis was to identify the built environment characteristics that influence the
emotional state loneliness among young adults during their daily activities. The research
questions focused both on the respondent-level variables and activity setting variables.
For the respondent-level variables, personality traits and trait loneliness had significant
effect on the loneliness scores. Socio-ecological variables, study time, education level and
partner status were seen as significant. Having a partner increased loneliness in individual.
This is in contrast with literature, as in various sources this is stated to decrease loneliness.
The type of house and household composition also influenced loneliness, with living in an
apartment/studio increasing loneliness, whilst living alone or with your partner had the
opposite effect. Social media use was important, with most of the social media types
increasing loneliness. TikTok, interestingly, seemed to decrease it.
Activity settings were derived from the social environment, the physical environment, and
contextual factors. For the social environment, being alone increased loneliness, whilst the
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influence of activities was inconclusive. The physical environment variables ‘accessibility’
and ‘atmosphere’ were found to be influential on emotional loneliness. The type of location
(e.g. home, on the road) and transport type (e.g. walking, car) also influenced loneliness.
Weekends were associated with lower loneliness levels, while weather variables did not
show significant results.
Even though the study does have its limitations in both time and facilities, the study
provides first insight in the built environment factors that influence the emotional state
loneliness of young adults. Create intimate connections by increasing accessibility and
atmosphere of the locations.