Reasons for underutilization of community care facilities for the elderly in China

China’s government has invested a great deal of resources to improve the coverage rate of community care facilities for the elderly. However, the facilities that have been built are underutilized.

Referring to the Anderson model, a framework for analyzing the utilization of community care facilities for the elderly was constructed. Descriptive statistics on survey data from 17 communities demonstrated the status of the utilization, and binary logistic regression analysis examined the influencing factors of the utilization.

Built community care facilities for the elderly are underutilized and there are significant differences in the influencing factors of the utilization between daily care facilities, medical care facilities, recreation facilities, and spiritual comfort facilities.

The main reasons for the underutilization can be delineated as follows: (1) The demand for community care facilities is outstripped by the supply, resulting in a surplus; (2) Complex constraints on demand for facilities due to insufficient enabling resources; (3) Inadequacy of community care facilities in meeting expectations. (4) High substitutability of community care facilities; (5) Bureaucratic pressure hindering facility development. To address the underutilization of community care facilities, it is recommended to clarify the community responsibility boundaries for elderly care and the role that the market plays in community care facilities for the elderly.