The quest for residential normalcy by older adults: Relocation but one pathway Stephen M. Golant ⁎ Department of Geography, P.O. Box 117315, 3117 Turlington Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, United States article info abstract Article history: Received 8 March 2011 Accepted 14 March 2011 This paper constructs a holistic emotion-based theoretical model identifying various pathways by which older adults can occupy residential environments that are congruent with their needs and goals. The model equates this individual-environment fittingness or “residential normalcy” with older persons having favorable or positive emotion-based residential experiences that have relevance to them. Older persons are theorized as being in their residential comfort zones when they experience overall pleasurable, hassle-free, and memorable feelings about where they live; and in their residential mastery zones when they occupy places in which they feel overall competent and in control. When older persons are out of either (or both) of these experiential zones, they are expected to initiate accommodative and/or assimilative forms of coping to achieve residential normalcy. The former are mind strategies by which they change their residential goals or assessments, mollify their negative emotional experiences, or engage in denial behaviors; the latter are action strategies, by which they change their activities or modify their residential settings. Moving to a new address is the most studied and prominent assimilative coping strategy, but also the one that requires the most strenuous adaptive efforts. The model theorizes that older persons move only under certain conditions. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Residential environment Aging in place Relocation Emotions Competence Control Introduction Even as we have historically constructed theories that elaborate on the principles of successful aging, we have failed to construct comparable treatments that generalize about where to grow old successfully. Environmental gerontologists agree that such a theoretical account would specify the conditions under which the residential environments or places of older adults are fitting or congruent with their current needs and goals (Moore, VanHaitsma, Curyto, & Saperstein, 2003; Scheidt & Windley, 2006; Wahl & Oswald, 2009). This would be true whether they occupy conventional dwellings and neighborhoods or planned senior housing arrangements, such as active adult communities, indepen- dent living communities, assisted living, or even nursing homes. A theory that predicted if older adults were living in such optimal places would be especially helpful for under- standing whether they would benefit from modifications to their residential or care environments or alternatively suffer from bad outcomes. It would also contribute to our understanding of why older adults stay put in their current dwellings – that is, age in place – as opposed to relocating to another address. The theoretical model constructed in this paper (Fig. 1) proposes several pathways by which older adults can occupy residential environments that fit their needs and goals. The model equates these congruent residential environments with older persons having overall favorable or positive emotion-based residential experiences, that is residential normalcy: Places where they experience overall pleasurable, hassle- free, and memorable feelings that have relevance to them; and where they feel both competent and in control — that is, they do not have to behave in personally objectionable ways or to unduly surrender mastery of their lives or environ- ments to others. Journal of Aging Studies 25 (2011) 193–205 ⁎ Tel.: +1 352 392 0494x218. E-mail address: golant@ufl.edu. 0890-4065/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2011.03.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Aging Studies journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaging