The role of beneficiaries' participation in South Africa low-income housing occupants' satisfaction

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from an investigation conducted in South Africa subsidised low-income housing, on how beneficiary's participation could influence residents' satisfaction with their houses. The study was conducted amongst South Africa housing practitioners' and the low-income housing occupants'. Data used in the study was obtained from a Delphi and field questionnaire study. Using Structural Equation Modelling software EQS, the influence of beneficiaries' participation was investigated. The finding was that beneficiary participation influence on the residents' satisfaction was statistically significant and hence exacted a direct influence in the prediction of the residents' satisfaction with their houses. The research was conducted in South Africa three metropolitan and one district municipalities. Therefore due to the idiosyncratic dataset used in the study, it remains to be seen if the evaluated relationships between beneficiary participation and residents' satisfaction can replicate to other cross-cultural datasets. If this is the case, the paper makes a significant contribution towards understanding residential satisfaction on subsidised low-income housing projects. This study provided significant insight into how beneficiary participation influence residents' satisfaction and how residents' satisfaction with their houses could be improved.