Residential Choice Research Articles

Elucidating the drivers of residential mobility and housing choice behaviour in a suburban township via push–pull–mooring framework

This study applies the “push-pull-mooring” model of migration to explain home purchase intention in a suburban township. “Push” effects include dissatisfaction and high housing costs in one’s current neighbourhood (“the origin”). “Pull” effects were consumers’ perceived value of the suburban township (“the destination”), which encompassed price, functional, emotional, social, symbolic, and Feng Shui aspects. Relocation costs and alternative township’s attractiveness were hypothesized as “mooring” effects that negatively impact purchase intention as well as moderate the push and pull effects. 179 valid responses from prospective home buyers were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Pull effects were found to exert a positive influence while mooring and push effects exert a negative influence on purchase intention. Moderation effects of the mooring factors were found to be not significant in this context. This study offers several interesting implications for researchers and marketing practitioners in the real estate industry.

Residential Location Choices of Couples Considering both Partners’ Residential Biographies and Family Ties

We investigate couples’ residential decisions by considering variables capturing elements of both partners’ residential biographies and family ties. We focus on the family formation stage because decisions made in this stage are rather long-term. We are particularly interested in the hometown as individuals have spent a great amount of time and an important life phase there. Our research questions are: (1) To what extent do people live in their hometown at family formation? (2) Which factors influence this choice? We consider previous residential experiences, social ties, socio-demographic and spatial variables in binary logit regressions. The data was collected from a sample of students at TU Dortmund University, their parents, and grandparents. In this paper, the parent couples’ residential location choices are analysed considering family ties to the grandparents. We apply a rigorous split half method for internal model validation. Recent research on residential decisions mostly considers either the partners or the life-course or social ties. Due to our unique dataset, we include all these factors. This allows us to draw conclusions on gendered residential choice. We find the length of residence to be positively and number of moves negatively associated with living at the hometown, two factors that have not been disentangled in previous research. We could not confirm the often proven male dominance. On the contrary, we found that the female’s family ties were more relevant. The hometown has not received the attention it deserves to date and has the potential to enrich demographic research and related fields. The rigorous split half method for internal validation has rarely been undertaken previously. The results point to the importance of model validation and thus present an innovative approach.

Household-level dynamics in residential location choice modelling with a latent auction method

A longstanding deficiency in the modelling of residential location choices is the common assumption of a single household decision-maker. This paper contributes to a growing literature on methods to capture intra-household dynamics in this decision process. A latent auction approach is employed to estimate a residential location choice model for the Greater Toronto Area. The present work extends the consideration of individual utility factors beyond simple commute time, to include frequency of automobile use, transit use, and the cost of parking at the destination. Results suggest a weakening differential between male and female roles in the residential location choice, as multi-worker households are increasing in response to increasing costs of living. The strength of the latent auction model is confirmed as a means of linking bid-rent with observed market prices. Several conclusions are drawn out of the model results, including a pattern of larger households preferring the larger and cheaper houses characteristic of suburban areas of the Greater Toronto Area.

Migration, Religion, and Residential Segregation at the Urban Level: The Case of Muslim Migrants in Rome and Milan

This article investigates residential segregation at the intraurban level of migrants in two Italian cities, Rome and Milan, considering religion as a point of reference in light of its pivotal role in terms of identity references for many migrants. The article focuses in particular on Muslim migrants—due to both the magnitude of their presence and complex issues related to their settlement in Italian cities. The analysis shows a low level of intraurban residential segregation of Muslim migrants in both cities, with some relevant differences related to national subgroups (e.g., a higher concentration for people coming from Bangladesh and Pakistan), so that religion seems not yet to be a main driver of residential choice for Muslim migrants. In light of both the low level of segregation of Muslim migrants and some features of Italian urban policies on migration and religion, we argue that residential concentration can currently play a beneficial role in terms of the insertion of migrants in Italian cities and fulfillment of some of their needs (e.g., availability of minority places of worship).

Practice patterns among early-career primary care (ECPC) physicians and workforce planning implications: protocol for a mixed methods study

IntroductionCanadians report persistent problems accessing primary care despite an increasing per-capita supply of primary care physicians (PCPs). There is speculation that PCPs, especially those early in their careers, may now...

The Impact of Traffic Gridlock on Values of Residential Properties in Apapa, Lagos Nigeria

Traffic gridlock has been a concern in research particularly in determining its effect on property values. Resultant findings have either been a negative or positive impact. For the case of Apapa in Lagos State which is the focus of this present study, traffic gridlock has been an experience of over ten years, hence the need to discover its impact on various property value types as against the collective findings in most previous research. Student-T test of significance at a 95% level of confidence was adopted with results derived for all property types of the calculated T result far outweighing that of the stipulated Tabulated T result of 1.645. These findings for all property types indicate that the increase in property values for various property types have not been distorted by the traffic gridlock and as such investors in residential properties in the study area will always make their profit notwithstanding the gridlock. The researchers hereby advocated further research in determining the choice of residency in Apapa notwithstanding the traffic gridlock.

Affordable single-family housing. From the traditions of the Warsaw School of Architecture

The hundredth anniversary of Poland regaining its independence (as well as the 100th anniversary of the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology) is an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of Warsaw’s architects. Designing a home which would be affordable to the Polish city citizens was an important for the Warsaw architects in the 20th century. The initial assumptions took into consideration the changing design requirements set before the architects (e.g. social, economic, or ecological). Thus the ideas and the creative designs that matched the current needs of the citizens of Warsaw, including the initiatives guaranteeing the availability of cheap, proprietary houses, are worth a closer look. In different periods of the 20th century, the idea of an affordable home found support in the urban planning: either in the form of a house in a garden city or a garden district, or by the support of economic, and at the same time ecological, construction. The architectural ideas were accompanied by the desire to ensure contemporary living standards, current aesthetic trends or the more popular stylistic trends. The modernist avant-garde of the “Warsaw school”, its eminent theorists, practicing academics and students had a huge impact on the architecture of the capital as well as the whole Poland. The architecture and urban planning of Żoliborz in the 1930s is an excellent example. The works of young enthusiasts of the European modernism were preceded by the “Blok” magazine and the Praesens group (1926) connected with the CIAM. In the post-war period, practically the only choice for residents of Warsaw was a flat in a prefabricated residential block. The cooperative and private middle-class houses began to appear at the end of the 20th century. The single-family houses, representing the modest means of their investors, were represented and popularized by the Warsaw magazine “Murator” and its nationwide competitions “Affordable Houses”. The suburban landscape of today’s Warsaw is dominated by catalogue projects of different quality while the outskirts of the city comprise mostly very intensive residential developments commissioned by developers. They are mostly based on the “wild” urban planning, without any social program. The Warsaw’s 1930s modernist style is continued today and is associated with good, logical and safe architecture, especially when compared with the hard to define the mass of the contemporary single-family houses. We long for the prestige and position of the avant-garde architecture which prevailed in the pre-war Warsaw. Neomodernism returns in the contemporary projects of the governmental program “Apartment Plus” and “Home Plus” (2018) which aims to create up to a thousand cheap, small, prefabricated houses. From hundreds of the competition submissions, the houses designed by the architects and students from our Faculty were selected to be built. The overview of the past century’s achievements of the Polish architects confirmed the thesis and initial assumptions. The results of the exploration have been used in design practice: i.a. in the affordable home competition project, which was highly regarded both by the public and the jury (first prize).

Relationship Between Pre-Residency Peer-Reviewed Publications and Subsequent G-Index Measurement of United States Radiation Oncology Resident Scholarly Activity

Measured by assessing the largest number of manuscripts (g) by an author which have been cited at least (g x g) times, the g-index has been associated with radiation oncology resident choice of academic versus private practice career. Pre-residency peer-reviewed publications (PRP) have also been associated with future resident career choice. The relationship between PRP and g-index has not been previously investigated. A list of recent radiation oncology resident graduates was compiled; the Scopus bibliometric citation database was then searched to collect and calculate g-index data for each resident as previously reported. Analyses were stratified based on the absence or presence of at least one PRP for each resident. Residents with at least one PRP had significantly higher g-index scores (10.41 versus 3.43; p<0.0001) than those with no PRP. Only 11 of the 87 residents (12.6%) with at least one PRP had a g-index < 4, compared with more than half (45/87; 51.7%) having a g-index of 10+. Of the residents with no PRP, 63.2% (48/76) had a g-index < 4, and only 13.2% (10/76) had a g-index of 10+; 23/76 (30.2%) had a g-index of zero. Radiation oncology residents with at least one PRP were significantly more likely than those with no PRP to have higher g-index scores, with a wide distinction in the likelihood of a double-digit score stratified by the presence or absence of PRP. The average resident with at least one PRP published 10 manuscripts cited at least 100 times, while the average resident with no PRP published three manuscripts cited at least nine times. These findings further cement PRP as an important, easily accessible tool during the residency application process for predicting future resident scholarly activity.

Co-dependent workplace, residence and commuting mode choice: Results of a multi-dimensional mixed logit model with panel effects

An effective instrument of urban planning to alleviate congestion is to create a job-housing balance, which depends on the co-localisation of housing and labour. This study is based on the contention that in response to dramatic change in their decision individuals and households maximize the combined utility of housing, job and commuting trips as opposed to maximizing their utility of one of these domains, treating the other dimensions as given, as many models assume. To support this contention, a stated choice experiment was designed to mimic the multidimensional choice behaviour of interest. Instead of creating an experimental design that is the same for all respondents, we generated an efficient design in which attribute values were pivoted using the real-world data of individual respondents. Based on data collected in Shenyang, China, a Mixed Multinomial Logit (MMNL) model with panel effects which allows for unobserved heterogeneity in individual preferences, was estimated to capture the effects of different residential, job and commuting attributes on multidimensional choice, accounting for the panel nature of the data. Our findings indicate that, 1) Housing tenure, size, price, distance to the bus stop, and housing location are important housing characteristics that help explaining the residential mobility choice process. Salary, job type, co-worker relationships and job environment are significant factors in the job mobility choice process. 2) Time-related factors influence commute mode choice. Choice of public transportation modes is sensitive to commuting costs while car mode choice is not. 3) People are relatively satisfied with their current situation and do not frequently make changes. Furthermore, people are less inclined to move house relative to changing job. 4) Both unobserved heterogeneity and demographic characteristics affect the multiple dimensions of choice.

Migrant Workers’ Residential Choices and China’s Urbanization Path: Evidence from Northeastern China

AbstractThe controversy over whether the path of prioritizing large cities sprawling or the path of prioritizing small cities development is better for Chinese urbanization is unresolved. In northe...

Identification of critical roads in urban transportation network based on GPS trajectory data

This study proposes a novel identification method of critical roads based on the combination of GPS trajectory data and directed weighted complex network. First, with both the static road network topology and the dynamic traffic flow characteristics taken into account simultaneously, a new spatial temporal model of urban transportation, namely a directed weighted complex network, is proposed. Then, combining the structure of road network with the strength influence of traffic between adjacent roads, a mixed influence-based identification algorithm of critical roads is proposed. Finally, we analyze taxi-GPS trajectory data collected in Lanzhou, China. We perform a comprehensive analysis to visualize the spatial–temporal changes of taxi services, critical roads, and critical intersections. Moreover, the correlation coefficient has been used to evaluate the performance of the identification algorithm of critical roads. The results show that the new identification algorithm is more effective and practical than traditional congestion index analysis. Our investigation should be helpful in urban traffic management and the residential choice of alternative routes.

Towards housing sustainability: a framework for the decision-making process of tenants

The mismatch between the supply and demand of rental apartments in Switzerland represents an obstacle to the transition towards a more sustainable society. The difficulty for the housing providers to accommodate the fast societal change of the demand brings about an increase in vacancies and, to minimize investment risks, a resistance to innovation in the building sector. In this context, understanding the determinants of tenants’ residential mobility and location choice becomes key to designing and promoting sustainable housing. In this paper we present a new interdisciplinary framework for the decision-making process of tenants. To do so, we elucidate the main parameters of the decisions to move and where to move, based on literature review and a group discussion in the Swiss canton of Vaud with the tenants of the two housing providers SCHL and Swiss Mobiliar. We find that the desired housing function determines the tenants’ housing selection. We observe that this desired function changes according to the type of trigger that pushes tenants to move. Additionally, we elicit the potential sustainability implications of the housing functions in the Swiss context. We conclude that the framework can serve as a starting point for rethinking sustainable interventions in the housing sector.

A Karu Based Experience about the Effect of Informal Land Delivery Channels’ on Housing Supply

For a long period of time, urban land delivery system in Nigeria has seen a stable association between formal and informal channels, which is going till date. Instead of the provision of the Land Use Act of 1978, which granted states (the second tier of government in Nigeria) the authority to hold and administer all lands within their territorial jurisdiction, interests for urban land are still largely being expressed through the informal mechanisms. These transactions continue defying all odds associated to it. This research established the extent to which informal land delivery channels has influenced housing supply in Karu, the gateway city to Nigeria’s capital Abuja. Data were obtained through primary sources, analyzed, and presented in matrixes. The outcome of this research suggests about the accessibility and economical value of lands. This has led development and financing options are the important factors that influence the choices of urban residents particularly the majority who are the low-medium income earners preferences of informal land delivery for their housing development. Despite their deficiencies as it regards; tenure security has been strengthened by its social legitimacy and possible upgrade to statutory status.Thus, the main conclusion of the study is that the predominant influence of these factors on the urban land market will continue to sustain the informality of land access and directly determine the rate of residential housing supply in most Nigerian cities. The study recommends that the operations of the informal land channel should be standardized as it promises to bea sustainable alternative to the formal system.

Heterogeneity in marginal value of urban mobility: evidence from a large-scale household travel survey in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area

The value of mobility is an unresolved question in transportation economics literature. The advent of ride-hailing services and the emergence of mobility as a service (MaaS) place increased pressure on the research community to develop methods to consider this question. We provide one of the first efforts to quantify the value of mobility using a consistent econometric approach. A series of discrete choice models are estimated for car ownership and residential density choices. The decision to purchase an additional vehicle is a concrete manifestation of the marginal value of travel vis-a-vis the desire to make additional trips. The proposed framework has the benefit of employing a single utility function, thus removing the need to set a reference alternative. Models are estimated with a large household travel survey for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, which provides a close approximation to the true population. We estimate separate values of mobility by household composition, providing evidence for a high degree of heterogeneity. Results are examined in the context of MaaS and it is found that the value of mobility is much higher in suburban areas than suggested in previous research. Model results provide strong evidence for potential social exclusion with the widespread adoption of MaaS. The methods explored in this paper show great promise for quantifying the value of mobility and we present recommendations for additional research in this direction.

Homeownership and job-match quality in France

Our empirical study stems from previous research on the inter-relations between residential status and microeconomic labor market outcomes. It focuses on employees and assesses the a priori ambiguous effect of homeownership on job-match quality. We use the French data set of the 1995–2001 European Community Household Panel to build a subjective measure of job downgrading. We estimate a recursive trivariate probit with partial observability that simultaneously models the residential status choice, its impact on the probability of being downgraded, and the selection into employment. Taking into account, the double selection process, into employment and into homeownership, and controlling unobserved individual heterogeneity, we find that private renters have between 30% and 40% higher probability of subjective downgrading than homeowners. Mortgage constraints increase the downgrading probability, but their effect is of a limited scope (around +2% percentage points for mortgagers compared with outright owners). We show that these results are robust to various specifications and instruments choice. Consequently, homeownership seems not to be associated to some harmful effects on the job-match quality. Our conclusions are consistent with recent microeconometric studies which call into question Oswald’s hypothesis.

Modelling residential location choices with implicit availability of alternatives

Choice set generation is a challenging aspect of disaggregate level residential location choice modelling due to the large number of candidate alternatives in the universal choice set (hundreds to hundreds of thousands). The classical Manski method (Manski, 1977) is infeasible here because of the explosion of the number of possible choice sets with the increase in the number of alternatives. Several alternative approaches have been proposed in recent years to deal with this issue, but these have limitations alongside strengths. For example, the Constrained Multinomial Logit (CMNL) model (Martínez et al., 2009) offers gains in efficiency and improvements in model fit but has weaknesses in terms of replicating the Manski model parameters. The rth-order Constrained Multinomial Logit (rCMNL) model (Paleti, 2015) performs better than the CMNL model in producing results consistent with the Manski model, but the benefits disappear when the number of alternatives in the universal choice set increases. In this study, we propose an improved CMNL model (referred to as Improved Constrained Multinomial Logit Model, ICMNL) with a higher order formulation of the CMNL penalty term that does not depend on the number of alternatives in the choice set. Therefore, it is expected to result in better model fit compared to the CMNL and the rCMNL model in cases with large universal choice sets. The performance of the ICMNL model against the CMNL and the rCMNL model is evaluated in an empirical study of residential location choices of households living in the Greater London Area. Zone level models are estimated for residential ownership and renting decisions where the number of alternatives in the universal choice set is 498 in each case. The performance of the models is examined both on the estimation sample and the holdout sample used for validation. The results of both ownership and renting models indicate that the ICMNL model performs considerably better compared to the CMNL and the rCMNL model for both the estimation and validation samples. The ICMNL model can thus help transport and urban planners in developing better prediction tools.

Women living alone in later life: A multicountry comparative analysis

AbstractThis paper compares the determinants of living alone among elderly women in six countries (Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan, Indonesia, Brazil, Spain, and Sweden) with very different family systems, policy contexts, levels of development, and socio‐economic characteristics. Different factors behind the residential choices of elderly women are estimated by means of logistic regression. Decomposition models are used to assess the extent to which observed differences between countries correspond to specific population compositions or to other factors. Although the importance of all independent variables for living alone is shown to be strong and statistically significant, persistent intercountry disparities in behaviour linked to levels of familism and development remain. Population composition explains only a small part of the observed differences in living alone. Economic development provides an important underlying explanation for the incidence of living alone among women, but many specific differences can also be explained by societal characteristics such as family systems and available policy options.

Return Intention, Subjective Social Status and Residential Choices of Rural Migrant Worker Households: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT Rural migrant workers constitute special groups in China whose hukou (household registration) is still in rural areas, but they engage in non-agricultural industry in towns or cities. Based on panel data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) in 2012 and 2014, we estimate the effects of return intention and the subjective social status on the residential choices of rural migrant worker households by using a Heckman two-stage model. The results show that return intention has a negative effect on the tenure choices of rural migrant worker households in China but a positive effect on their neighbourhood choices. Furthermore, their residential choices are affected not only by their objective social status (education, occupation, income, etc.) but also by their subjective social status. The subjective social status has a positive effect on the tenure choices of rural migrant worker households in China but a negative effect on their neighbourhood choices.

Understanding stated neighborhood preferences: The roles of lifecycle stage, mobility style, and lifestyle aspirations

Stated neighborhood preference is informed by a host of factors describing an individual’s socioeconomic condition, current environmental context, recent transportation decisions, and future aspirations for certain housing and accessibility attributes. To date, travel applications and behavioral models investigating the residential location choice process have been parsimonious in differentiating decision-makers and the available neighborhood supply. This Portland, Oregon study used stated preference survey data and an integrated choice and latent variable modeling framework to provide a new awareness of the relationships between an individual’s lifecycle stage, mobility style, lifestyle aspirations, and underlying preference in residential environment. Specifically, we found that aspirations regarding housing and accessibility were strong predictors of stated neighborhood preferences, while mobility style was also closely associated with these lifestyle aspirations. Also, consistent with a narrative of gentrification, high income households preferred more urban environments with better multimodal access.

Pupils on the move: School catchment area segregation and residential mobility of urban families

Socio-spatial segregation has been recognised as an important factor affecting school segregation and educational attainment in urban schools. As urban populations grow and socio-spatial segregation has become a pressing issue in many contexts, a more sophisticated understanding of the interconnections between spatial and school segregation is needed, including the role of school catchment areas as a possible mediating factor. In our article, we focus on the two-way relationship between urban residential mobility and catchment area segregation in Helsinki, Finland. Using fine-grain statistical data we analyse how the long-term changes in spatial segregation have changed catchment area populations and how residential mobility of families with children is, in turn, related to catchment area composition. The analysis focuses on the majority population whose residential choices typically have the strongest impact on segregation patterns in cities. Our main finding is that there is a systematic relationship between socio-spatial segregation and catchment area differentiation, where the disadvantaged areas are consistently left behind in the general socio-economic development. Even though the institutional school quality is high throughout the city, the residential choices of families with children feed into the self-perpetuating cycles of segregation, as the most disadvantaged areas are rejected and privileged areas favoured in mobility patterns. The results highlight the need for urban educational policies with a high sensitivity to the persistent socio-spatial inequalities shaping educational opportunities.