Žmonių identifikacija su gyvenamąja vieta kaip materialiosios terpės kokybės kriterijus

Consideration is given to social importance of the living environment quality expressed by the level of identification of dwellers with it, i.e. by their emotional attachment to the place they live in, as well as by their satisfaction for its functional and aesthetic features. On the basis of numerous applied sociological research the author seeks to disclose the main sides of this sociological phenomenon - both a spiritual attachment of people to their living environment and their pragmatic, utilitarian evaluation of it. Two levels of identification are studied: the first one - identifications with the whole city and the second one - identification with the nearest vicinity. Usually the fact of identification is established during the sociological research, inquiring the local population, by presenting a question to them: “Would you prefer staying to reside here (in this city, district, block) if/when given opportunity to move to an other locality?” Proportional amount of positive answers allows to get the dimension of identification level. It is widely settled that more than half of positive answers received is a necessary condition to state an existence of identification. Also, it is a common practice to compare the results of identification search in different localities, to look for and to compare factors causing it, to study its dependence. A large scale sociological survey of Vilnius City had disclosed an undoubtful attachment of the local population to their city. The amount of “yes” answers received to the question mentioned above reached more than 66%. A deeper study of this sociological survey, aimed to establishing such an inhabitants’ position in a more detailed territorial aspect, to defining its dependence on their living conditions, intelligence, well-being, has revealed an impact of some social characteristics. Estimations of the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient by confronting sequence (queues, ranks) of Vilnius 20 administrative districts (so called “seniūnija”) according to the level of their resident’s identification on the one hand, and with the same ones according to the social characteristics mentioned above on the other hand, show an evident mutual interrelationship. Among the numerous indicators establishing the highest value of the coefficient were the intelligence of inhabitants (comparative weight of persons with a higher education) and the standard of living. Other material conditions had a rather weak influence on identification. More numerous and favourable factors of identification were found when examined at the level of the nearest vicinity. The highest significance of the mentioned coefficient was obtained by the confronting queue (rank) of districts according to identification of inhabitants and the rank of the most wanted city districts (rxy=0.779). High values of the coefficient were estimated by the same confrontation with living standards (rxy=0.510), with the fact of possessing a private apartment (rxy=0.391) and a car (rxy=0.367). The results of studies of influence on identification allowed to formulate the following conclusions: 1) Identification of the population with the whole city is associated more with subjective aspects and less with the direct material conditions of people’s life; 2) Identification with a concrete nearest environment is mostly connected with the objective factors: mainly with the material well-being of people. Arguments are presented to prove that living standards and their influence on the level of identification determine directly people’s social-habitual activity.