Cyclical impact of regional attractiveness characteristics on migration flows

Abstract

Achieving strategic goals of the spatial development implies improving the living en vironment for the population, increasing its mobility on the one hand and concentration in pro spective centres of the economic growth on the other. The paper studies the migration behaviour with the use of coefficients of the mechanical growth rate of the population in conditions of the varying attractiveness of the Russian regions, which depends on stages of economic cycle. The methodological basis of the research comprises spatial economics, content theories of motiva tion, theory of population migration, and theory of economic cycles. The research uses the sta tistics of the socioeconomic development of 83 subjects of the Russian Federation for the period of 2005–2017 that corresponds to the declining phase of the long half-wave. To investigate the influence of regional attractiveness factors on the intensity of migration flow the authors apply regression analysis methods. The spatial regression models are built for each year of the studied period using the IBM SPSS Statistics. The dynamics analysis of the coefficients of migration growth during the period of the long half-wave reveals two short-term cycles, one lasting from 2005 to 2010 and the other continuing from 2010 to 2015. The findings indicate that indicators tend to converge in the descending phase of the short-term cycle and, au contraire, to diverge in the ascending phase across regions. Based on the dynamics of elasticity coefficients of the migra tion growth, the authors identify regions’ characteristics, which increase their influence on the intensity of migration flow in the ascending phase and decrease it in the descending phase of the short-term cycle. Obtained quantitative estimates of the cyclical effects of territories’ attrac tiveness characteristics may promote the efficiency of measures for controlling migration flows.