Density and community enclosure are the most widely applied policy tools for residential environments. The effectiveness of these policies is often assessed by the social impacts imposed on local communities. A serious gap in the relationship between density and social outcomes is that present literature deals with internal and external density separately and ignores the role of community enclosure in social procedures. Recent studies have declared that to achieve the desired environmental quality, individuals’ perceptions of density should be considered. They have also highlighted that high perceived density predicts low social interactions and territoriality is a well-established mediator of this association. The present paper investigates the similarities and differences of the causal effect between perceived density and social interactions in gated and non-gated communities. A survey was distributed to a sample of 522 habitants residing in six neighborhoods. Presented moderated mediation models suggest that in both types of communities, territoriality mediates the effect of perceived density on social interactions. In non-gated communities residents who perceive a high level of interior crowding may experience the strengthened negative effects of high perceived density on social outcomes. Instead, in gated communities, when perceived interior crowding is high, a higher level of correlation exists between territoriality and social interactions. This finding supports the idea that the residents’ incapability to achieve the desired level of privacy encourages boundary-control behavior in shared spaces.

密度和社区围合是居住环境中应用最广泛的政策工具。这些政策的有效性通常通过对当地社区的社会影响来评估。密度与社会结果之间关系的一个严重差距是，目前的文献分别处理内部和外部密度，而忽略了社区圈地在社会过程中的作用。最近的研究表明，为了达到理想的环境质量，应该考虑个人对密度的看法。他们还强调，高感知密度预示着低社会互动，而地域性是这种关联的公认中介。本文研究了封闭和非封闭社区中感知密度与社会互动之间因果关系的异同。对居住在六个社区的 522 名居民的样本进行了调查。提出的调节中介模型表明，在这两种类型的社区中，地域性调节了感知密度对社会互动的影响。在非门禁社区中，感知高度内部拥挤的居民可能会体验到感知密度高对社会结果的负面影响。相反，在封闭式社区中，当感知到的内部拥挤程度很高时，地域性和社会互动之间存在更高水平的相关性。