Vol.:(0123456789) Journal of Housing and the Built Environment https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-020-09804-x 1 3 ARTICLE The role of self‑determination needs and sense of home Maryam Soleimani 1  · Minou Gharehbaglou 1 Received: 23 September 2019 / Accepted: 7 December 2020 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract Although social scientists and architectures have studied the meaning of home to self- identity, developing a sense of home concerning self encompasses much more than just it. Thus, the present study aims to investigate the sense of home concerning the concept of "self-determination" concerning its fundamental factors, which comprise three aspects autonomy, competence, and relatedness. For this purpose, a composite-heuristic method was chosen for the study, which included in-depth interviews using a topic list developed through a literature review and the questionnaire surveys. First interviews were conducted with twelve middle-class dwellers of Boroujerd city of Lorestan in Iran to determine the environmental dimensions responding to self-determination. The researchers conducted the questionnaire surveys with ninety-one participants chosen from architecture students at the University of Boroujerd in Iran to examine the hypotheses derived from the data. The research fndings show that the self-determination directly explains the variation of home sense through three main aspects: autonomy by 46.7%, competence by 31.6% and related- ness by 30.5%. These aspects referred to self-security and self- expression and show that for developing a sense of home, the home must be so fexible and adaptable that humans can independently behave in their private and public space. Keywords Sense of home · Self-determination · Autonomy · Competence · Relatedness 1 Introduction In the environment interaction, human beings try to meet their needs so that they can give meaning to the environment. In general, the environment in response to social dimensions must have more capabilities than physical features (Gibson 1979). Today attention to the meaning of home and residential space has more limited physical struc- tures due to the growth of urbanization and constructions. Whereas, according to dif- ferent theories, the sense of home is a complex set of various psychological, cultural, * Minou Gharehbaglou M.gharehbaglou@tabriziau.ac.ir Maryam Soleimani M.soleimani@tabriziau.ac.ir 1 Department of Architecture and Urbanism, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Nowbar, Tabriz, East Azerbaijan Province, Iran