SUCCESSFUL AGING: DECISION-MAKING PROCESS OF MOVING INTO A SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY

Zihui Ma

No matter how old you are or where you are, there is an ultimate question that everyone asks oneself—how can I live a happy, healthy, and engaged life? This ultimate question may become even bolder when someone enters his or her senior life. This study aims to approach this question from the model of senior living, which is an ideal combination of gerontology, psychology, sociology, food and nutrition, interior design, and residential life management. Specifically, this study investigates the decision-making process of moving into a senior living community among seniors and individuals who are approaching their senior life in the next 10 to 15 years. This study was launched in an attempt to gain a better understanding about people who are 50 or over, when thinking about their senior life, what are the most important aspects they want to obtain in order to have a happy, healthy, and engaged senior life. These aspects would be well reflected when individuals make a decision to move into a senior living community, and are also mirrored in the services and supporting systems the senior living industry can provide, or should provide if they haven’t yet. Building upon the theory of planned behavior from social psychology, successful aging concept from gerontology, and the Andersen model of medical service utilization, and after conducting interviews, pilot studies, and surveys, the results identify what beliefs people hold toward moving into a senior living community, how individuals evaluate and prioritize important factors of making a decision, and how these important factors interplay with each other in the decision-making process. Major findings could benefit practitioners in the senior living industry. First, besides high physical and cognitive activity, senior life should be purposeful and be able to facilitate dreams. Second, the image of senior living is highly related to the image of aging, which brings the psychological preparation of aging and migration as an essential component of the decision-making process. Third, seniors are influenced by their important relationships and should maintain these relationships, but they also would like to be the decision-maker of their own life.

SUCCESSFUL AGING: DECISION-MAKING PROCESS OF MOVING INTO A SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY

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