ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
The Temperature of Connection: Psychological Mechanisms and Happiness Generation in AI-Enabled Neighborhoods
1. NingboTech University, Ningbo, China
2. Joongbu University, Geumsan-gun, Republic of Korea
3. Nantong Institute of Technology, Nantong, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
AI is rapidly reshaping neighborhood services, yet we lack a nuanced account of which experiential cues matter, how they combine, and why they relate to residents' well-being. We address this gap with a three-part inquiry. First, building on Cognition–Affect–Conation and informed by technology acceptance, service quality, and social presence perspectives, we specify five designable cues—reliability, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, service efficiency, and aesthetic perception—and position digital attachment and continued use intention as socio-psychological linkages to well-being. Second, using a three-wave survey (four-week lags; four smart-community pilots in Zhejiang; matched panel n = 452), we triangulate PLS-SEM, ANN, and NCA to test relationships, surface nonlinear and non-compensatory patterns, and probe necessity. The results converge: instrumental appraisals (credible, useful, easy) provide the foundation for attachment and ongoing engagement, which are strongly associated with higher well-being; efficiency and aesthetics function as amplifiers rather than stand-alone drivers; no single condition is necessary, indicating that well-being arises from complementary configurations of cues. Third, we translate these insights into practice by prioritizing baseline thresholds for reliability/usefulness/ease, treating efficiency and aesthetics as conversion accelerators, and embedding lightweight participation loops at high-presence touchpoints.
Summary
Keywords
AI-empoweredneighborhoods, China, Community well-being, Continueduseintention, Digitalattachment
Received
09 November 2025
Accepted
17 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Chen and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Jiajun Chen
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.