Secondary cities at the residential housing frontier: Examining the determinants of private renters’ residential satisfaction in Ghana

Decades of political ambivalence, housing injustice, and a neoliberal housing sector aided by the government's lax approach to housing provision have meant that, private rental housing remains the predominant sector for housing urban residents and their shifting geographies into secondary cities. Residential satisfaction in urban areas provides an important socio-spatial view of the housing sector in secondary cities and its implications for the inclusive and sustainable development of small and medium-sized cities. Yet, a large set of studies into the private rental housing sector has paid little attention to the influence of housing services (i.e. satisfaction with maintenance services, utility services and privacy) on residential satisfaction amongst private rental households. Using an ordinal logistic regression model and based on a sample size of 246 private rental households, this paper examined the influence of sociodemographic and housing services (i.e. satisfaction with maintenance services, utility services and privacy) variables on residential satisfaction amongst private rental households living in Cape Coast, Ghana. The chi-square test revealed a significant relationship between duration of stay (χ² = 15.908, p = 0.003), satisfaction with maintenance service (χ² = 98.477, p = 0.000), satisfaction with utility services (electricity and water) (χ² = 45.934, p = 0.000), satisfaction with privacy (χ ² = 41.252, p = 0.000) and residential satisfaction. Further, the logistic regression analysis also showed a significant negative relationship between maintenance services (β = −3.928, p < 0.001), utility services (electricity and water) (β = −1.033, p < 0.001), privacy (β = −2.716, p < 0.01) and residential satisfaction. The findings call for the attention of both researchers and policymakers to recognize the inseparable relationship between housing and the broader built environment and to address challenges confronting the rental housing sector—considering that the quality of the residential environment is directly linked to the quality of life and the socio-physical well-being of residents.