Awareness of Environmental Pollution, Neighborhood Relationships, Physical and Mental Health Effects on Concerns about Aging: Korean and Japanese Cases

Abstract

This research utilized a structural equation model to analyze the data with cases of Korea and Japan so that it could search whether it mediates both the physical mental health state and the residential environment have an effect on any kinds of path to the aging anxiety. The results are summarized as follows. Firstly, the residential environments in Korea and Japan differences in their effect on concerns about aging. Physical residential environment and social residential environment were found to affect the direct influence in the case of Korea to anxiety about aging. However, physical residential environment affected the direct influence in the case of Japan to the aging anxiety. Secondly, in both Korea and Japan, residential environment showed differences in the path of an effect on anxiety about aging. Whereas social residential environment among the residential environment have an effect on the aging anxiety by mediating the physical mental health state in the case of Korea, the physical residential environment was exposed to reach the meaningful influence the aging anxiety by mediating the physical mental health state in the case of Japan. Thirdly, except that it was rejected in the path between residential environment and the aging anxiety injecting the demographic variable which the family took care, includes the yes or no as a control variable after a control variable input that social residential environment affected the meaningful influence to the aging anxiety. It was similar with the path of the causal sequence of the control variable input before. The institutional measure relieving the aging anxiety was suggested based upon this analyzed result.