Elderly's Interaction Activities In Daily Shopping Spaces

With the acceleration of aging cities in our country,behavior and needs of the elderly become a ho t topic for scholars.Due to reasons such as retirement,social network of the elderly becomes narro w and their loneliness is growing.Social interaction becomes an important means for the elderly t o reduce their loneliness,and becomes an important index to evaluate the quality of their living.L arge supermarkets farmers' markets and other daily shopping space is the main form of urban con-sumption space,and also one of the higher frequency space for the use of the elderly.It plays an important role in the elderly's daily life.Using field observation,questionnaire,semi-structured and other methods,this study selected several typical daily shopping space such as large superma-rkets,farmer's markets and shopping malls,and analyzed social interaction among the elderly in their daily shopping space.Based on "sociability" model,the research studies the contents,characteristics,influencing facto-rs and mechanism of the elderly's social interaction,the research find that the that the social in-teraction activity is an important activity of the elderly in supermarkets,the interaction activity is affected by multiple factors including age,educational level,family structure,sense of loneliness and space environment,and the it forms different types and characteristics.In addition,due to the differences of location,space environment and orientation,the characteristics of interaction activi-ties are not the same in daily shopping spaces of different types.Through structural equation model,this study found that the motivation of the elderly to go to the shopping space has changed from mere shopping to interaction and leisure because of their social and cultural attributes as well as their psychological states(loneliness),which also lead to the increase of frequency to go shopping and the time spent there.And finally the shopping space interaction mechanism of the elderly has transformed from a spontaneous process to a non-spontaneous process.In the complex spcial and social urban system,the features of interaction in daily shopping space of elderly is impacted by different types and interactions of community,while the interaction acti vities of interaction in daily shopping space of elderly take the reaction on community interaction.Boundaries between daily shopping space of elderly and community space become fuzzy.Interac tion and leisure behavior in daily shopping space of elderly constructs to the sociality wherein,lea ding to the domination of implicit function within the social interaction,which tunes the shopping space into a social intercourse space.Studies suggest that in the design of supermarkets and other shopping space,we can set reasonable and comfortable public space to encourage more old people to come and communicate,In the new context,community planning and senior facilities planning are becoming new spots of urban plan-ning,the results of the study can provide new ideas and direction of this two types of planning.The modern city is filled with the deepening of residential isolation and the scarcity of social inter action space which suit for the elder,the construction of the social interaction and the unearth of s ocial value posses the reality significance which help the elder get rid of the loneliness and solitari ly,and improve the life quality and happiness environment and the social interaction,within provi ding a new direction for the research of consumption space and aging study.