Evaluation of the Effects of Environmental Quality on Residents’ Social Relations: Aab-Kooh Sector in Mashhad City

Environmental attitudes are recognized as an indicator and component of environmental behavior. There are many theoretical and empirical approaches to investigate attitude towards environment in the respected literatures. Most of the studies related to this issue have been conducted since 1970 onwards when conceptualization of environmental attitudes as a scientific research concept gained closer attention by researchers. Environmental quality was one of the most critical subjects of environmental attitude studies. The formation, maintenance, and reproduction of social relationships generally occur in a spatial context. Social science has been the potential interpenetration of action and space for individual and social behavior. One approach to this subject has been taken by those working within the framework of environmental quality. This article is mainly concerned with the role of environmental quality on social relationships. The main question of the present research is, whether environmental quality have any influence on social relation or not? It seems that there is significant relation between the quality of environment and social connections. In order to examine the above hypothesis, one of the Mashhad’s neighborhoods was selected as the case study. This neighborhood has been located respectively in the zone 1 / region 2 of the city of Mashhad. Then the variables were determined and defined. There were two main variables in this paper. To evaluate the first variable (environmental quality) some indexes were determined. Also to evaluate the second variable (citizens’ social relations) several indexes were chosen. Then a questionnaire was prepared and data were collected. Finally the responds were analyzed by SPSS. The empirical results deriving from the data show that there are certain strong influences of the environmental quality and social relation. So, the hypothec of the investigation was accepted. It means that in the area under study there is a meaningful relation between social relationship and environmental quality.