THE RESIDENTIAL PREFERENCES OF NEW ZEALAND SCHOOL STUDENTS: Some Tests of the Economic and Ecological Man Concepts

Abstract

SUMMARY The main findings of this first analysis of the spatial preferences of New Zealand school pupils are: 1 A relatively low degree of consensus among the individuals at the various schools which suggests that the broad ecological man assumption may not be particularly valid. The students clearly have widely differing views of the New Zealand environment and where they would like to live in it, and these may be important in determining where they will live in the future. It may be that more detailed study will indicate consensus among separate groups of students—are a farmer's children more parochial, for example? 2 An increase in the degree of consensus about the preferential rankings of the various ‘regions’ with increasing age of respondents. There is no evidence, of course, that this trend continues beyond the school years. 3 A lack of any obvious general New Zealand pattern of preferences but rather a number of macro-regional types. Within these, however, it is possible to identify several tendencies: (a) intense local preference for the home ‘region’ and, usually, neighbouring areas; (b) a general preference for certain parts of the N.I. (notably Auckland, Bay of Plenty and Hawke's Bay); (c) low preferences for inland areas. The localism, however, is less obvious among the senior students (despite their greater amount of consensus) than the juniors. Unfortunately, such findings have no immediate relevance for any study of actual migrations, as against the latent flows identified here (one reason for this, of course, is the absence of any migration data for New Zealand). Nevertheless, they do show, for the relatively limited sample employed, that in terms of residential preferences each ‘region’ of New Zealand does not have the same utility for all persons so that the initial hypothesis must be rejected. The general impression is that the youth of the country prefer home, the beach, the sun, and, perhaps, the city (and cynical critics will claim that we knew this already!). Several interesting hypotheses are suggested, however, apart from those already indicated. For example, as Wellington is generally an undesirable place, yet clearly many have to go to live there in order to find employment (especially State employees), will there be a greater turnover of population there than in the more popular Auckland? And, apart from the native-born, will the ‘region's’ population be generally less satisfied with its environment than the residents of the more desirable areas? Similarly, with the increasingly footloose nature of industry and the greater influence of the physical environment on location decisions (Chisholm, 1962), will we see a greater concentration of big-city industry in the more popular Auckland and Christchurch, plus a dispersion to Nelson, Hawke's Bay and the Bay of Plenty? And finally, would Nelson still be as desirable if its city were as large as Wellington's?