The Importance of Urban Environment on Residents’ Happiness by Using Spatial Visualization Technology

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory, happiness is a higher-level demand that people have spare no effort to pursue until they meet basic needs. As a subjective feeling, happiness is affected by many factors. For example, personal characteristic factors include gender, age, marital status, health level, economic income, nationality, and others. However, the impact of objective factors on happiness has gradually attracted scholars’ and the governments’ attention, including urban economic development, social infrastructure, and economic infrastructure, which will have a corresponding impact on residents’ happiness. This study applies spatial visualization technology to investigate the importance of the urban environment on residents’ happiness. The spatial visualization map of residents’ environmental satisfaction shows that people in the east and north are happier than the rest of the regions. Moreover, in terms of education, medical care, transportation, and lighting in residential areas, cities in the eastern region have higher satisfaction. Overall, nine environmental factors are considered in the econometric model, and the results show that urban traffic satisfaction has the greatest impact on residents’ happiness. This study aims to systematically investigate the mechanism of residents’ happiness from the perspective of the urban environment, which is different from previous studies, and points out the importance of the urban environment to citizens.