Latent factor analysis and measurement on sustainable urban livability in Siliguri Municipal Corporation, West Bengal through EFA and CFA model

Abstract

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal targets to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable; as it is predicting 95% urban expansion in the next decades. Consequently, urban livability can serve as a useful conceptual and analytical framework to improve the quality of urban life by facilitating the evaluation of the person–environment relationship and leading the improvement without deteriorating the environmental conditions. This present paper aims to identify the dimensions and indicators of subjective and objective livability for Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC). The residents’ perception has been carried out using stratified random sampling technique. Samples have been collected from the residents from each core, semi-periphery and peripheral areas of SMC. Mainly, adaptation of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) model involves four livability dimensions; under which the overall model explains 65% of the total variance indicating with the high reliability (α > 0.7) and the Goodness-of-fit index (GFI) about 0.90. The result indicates that, ‘Accessibility Factor’ bears the highest impact (24.91%) among the four latent variables and ‘Socio-Economic’ factor has the lower impact (8.39%) upon the urban livability.