Abstract

Within the fraternity of environmental psychology, growing concern towards human health and environment quality has revived the viewpoint of designers and planners for residential planning. Researchers have shown the importance of ambient indoor environment for the maintenance of residences Quality of Life (QOL) and Health. Also alongwith the design of the house person’s characteristics play an important role in the formation of the perception, belief and attitude toward the residential environment and its satisfaction. To maintain the residential QOL and health, ancient Indian science of building i.e. Vaastu is becoming more popular these days in India. On the basis of topographical, climate and energy system, vaastu talks about the significance of different directions (north, east, south west, northeast, northwest, south and southwest) in residential planning. A building designed according to Vaastu claims to ensure better health and QOL of the residences. Based on the above notion, present study applied ANOVA and Regression analysis to analyze the impact of Vaastu principles. For this purpose, 64 participants from vaastu and non-vaastu residences were administered the measure of ‘Housing Evaluation’, ‘Housing Satisfaction’ and WHO-QOL short version. Result showed that main effect of Vaastu played a significant role for Housing Evaluation, Housing Satisfaction, overall QOL and Environment QOL dimension. Further same data was analyzed for Vaastu predictability and was found that Vaastu as a predictor didn’t play a significant role for QOL but Housing Satisfaction emerged as a significant predictor. Implications of the findings are discussed in the light of person’s perception of residential design.