Residential Decisions Research Articles

A Model Proposed for the Prediction of Future Sustainable Residence Specifications Using Analytical Network Process

In Egypt, people are unable to determine the qualities of appropriate residence that achieves quality and occupant satisfaction, and contributes to sustainability of residential conglomerations. In general, developing countries lack housing information which can be used to enhance quality of residence. Also, the methods of assessing and identifying the appropriate criteria for future residence quality remain traditional ones that cannot address the multiple, conflicting, overlapping aspects to reach a good decision. This calls for using the Analytical Network Process (ANP), an effective tool for specifying the relative importance of all factors impacting a specific issue for making an appropriate residential decision. In addition, this method provides results for the decision element impacts network within the decision structure; thus contributing to more understanding of the mechanisms and requirements of residence selection. The proposed decision structure comprises a two-level network: main clusters, main elements, and sub-elements included in the demographic characteristics group, the residence criteria group, the demand parameters group, the supply parameters group, the residence specifications group, and the alternatives group which representing, in total, the decision and specifying the percentage needed for each housing level. Results of the model showed complete capacity in smoothly addressing complexities and overlapping in the decision structure. The decision structure showed that 52% chose luxury residence, 28% chose middle-class residence, and 19.5% chose the economic residence. Mechanisms of decision making were analyzed; particularly in terms of relationship to demographic characteristics and residence specifications. Also, the importance and impact of demand / supply parameters in reaching decision were analyzed.

To move or not to move? Residential mobility of rural migrants in a medium-sized Chinese city: the case of Yangzhou

This article evaluates the residential mobility decisions of rural migrants with a history of living in urban villages in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu province. Many were displaced by its demolition–redevelopment policy (forced movers); some chose to move voluntarily to improve their housing utility (voluntary movers); others decided to stay put in substandard housing (voluntary non-movers). A survey of their current housing conditions revealed that, compared to voluntary non-movers, most forced movers had not become better-off. But the voluntary movers had done much better than both of the other groups, implying that a timely move could have led to their improved housing conditions. However, even voluntary moves proved to have a downside, namely, that voluntary migrants would likely end up living somewhere more remote from coveted facilities and locations of jobs in the inner city. Logistic regression analysis showed how differences in socio-demographic characteristics between voluntary movers and non-movers could explain why some decided to move. For those who decided to stay, the analysis also indicates how the advantages of the current location may compensate for housing deficiencies. These results correspond to the motives migrants expressed in supplementary in-depth interviews: migrants intending to become permanent residents were most likely to move for better housing. The findings also point to structural constraints on residential mobility. For poor migrants without a Jiangsu hukou, moving to better housing was simply not an option. This suggests that further hukou reform is needed if urban redevelopment is not only meant to improve the image of the city but also the migrants’ housing conditions.

Signalling the End of the Migration Journey: Exploring Transnational Ageing Narratives on Residential Selection

After migrating from Jamaica to Canada, many transmigrants eventually become retirees. With increased insecurity in later life, older adult transmigrants continue to experience the ever-shifting conceptions of identity and belonging. With most of their working lives spent in Canada, they now have multi-layered identities stemming from their transnational and diasporic experiences. These considerations remain important when they are faced with residential decisions about where to live when they retire. This paper illustrates the spatial and temporal contexts of the transnational ageing experience by exploring the findings of a multi-sited ethnographic study of Jamaican Canadian retirees (age 60 and over). The study aimed to foster an understanding of the transmigrant experiences of Jamaican Canadian older adults who live in and across Canada and Jamaica. Central questions were the following: How do retired Jamaican Canadian transmigrants perceive their experience of retirement? What are some of the considerations in selecting a final residence after they retire? How do they signal the end of their migration journey from Jamaica to Canada? Data collection took place in Toronto, Canada, and in Trelawny and Manchester, Jamaica. The study revealed opportunities and challenges associated with ageing across borders and the factors which determine where older adult transmigrants select as their final residence post-retirement, a process which signals the occlusion of their migration endeavour.

도시 1인 가구의 주거지 결정에 대한 젠더 차이 : 관악구 20~30대 가구의 안전성 욕구와 주거비를 중심으로

도시 1인 가구의 주거지 결정에 대한 젠더 차이 : 관악구 20~30대 가구의 안전성 욕구와 주거비를 중심으로

The value of school in urban China: a spatial quantile regression with housing transactions in Beijing

ABSTRACTThis study adopts microdata of individual housing transactions in Beijing to explore the value that households place on high-quality schools. It is among the first to match exactly the housing unit with its corresponding school in studies on Chinese housing markets. We find a significant school premium of 21.1% in Beijing’s housing market after controlling the unobservable neighbourhood effects using regressions with a spatial lag. We have further discovered different school premiums across quantiles with a spatial quantile regression. The result finding a larger school premium in the lower-priced housing units suggests that low-income households prefer high-quality schools over housing consumption. Our results indicate that public education influences households’ residential location choice and housing consumption decisions, which thus have important policy implications in public goods provision, housing development and urban planning.

Social Capital and Residential Decision Making Among Rural and Nonrural College Graduates

Due to the low demand for highly educated workers in rural areas, high‐achieving rural students have been portrayed as having to pick between staying close to home and facing limited economic opportunities or leaving to pursue higher education and socioeconomic advancement. But what of those who want both—college degree and return to rural living? Comparing the experiences of rural graduates who returned to rural locales with those who out‐migrated and nonrural graduates across one predominantly rural state, this study explores how social capital matters in the residential decision‐making process. Proximity to work and family were the primary factors determining adult residence. Sense of place—but not attachment to a specific community—also mattered, especially for rural graduates. Family, school, and community social capital were more likely to play a role in career development for rural students, as career aspirations during adolescence followed by career‐driven college choices created pathways for rural return. Findings underscore the importance of analyzing rural return from a regional lens, as respondents reframed lifestyle elements researchers tend to portray as mutually exclusive—rural lifestyle, proximity to family, and professional career—as compatible by employing broad and flexible definitions of proximity and place.

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.

Why Poor Families Move (And Where They Go): Reactive Mobility and Residential Decisions

Despite frequent moves, low–income black families are more likely than any other group to churn among disadvantaged neighborhoods, and the least likely to escape them. Traditional explanations for neighborhood inequality invoke racial preferences and barriers to living in high–income neighborhoods, but recent work suggests that it is also involuntary mobility—such as eviction—which predicts the neighborhood destinations of poor African American families in urban areas. However, we know little about how individuals actually make residential decisions under such unplanned and constrained conditions. Using longitudinal interviews with low–income African–American families residing in Mobile, AL, and Baltimore, MD, we describe the array of factors that lead poor black families to move, and describe how families secure housing in the wake of unplanned mobility. We observe that moving among the poor is more reactive than it is voluntary: Approximately 70 percent of most recent moves are catalyzed by landlords, housing quality failures, and violence. We show how this reactive mobility both accelerates and hampers residential selection in ways that may reproduce neighborhood context and inequality. Where mobility is characterized by a greater degree of agency, we show that the strategies families use to make decisions often prohibit them from investigating a wider range of residential options.

Analyzing residential weatherization decisions using hybrid simulation modeling

Weatherizing residential buildings to make them more energy efficient offers great potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving resources, and improving occupant comfort and well-being in the face of climate change. However, weatherization adoption rates remain low. Previous research suggests that social norms and energy-related interactions within a community have greater influence on households’ weatherization adoption decisions than financial incentives. Therefore, an increased understanding of how social factors can be leveraged to encourage more households to weatherize is needed. This paper describes a hybrid simulation model on households’ weatherization adoption decisions in an urban community. The simulation model integrates a building energy simulation model with an agent-based model that is embedded in a social network to represent the interactions, adaptations, and decision making of individual households over time. The model is demonstrated for several experimental scenarios for a residential block in the City of Des Moines, Iowa. Results indicate that social connectedness, community leaders, and delivery mechanisms for weatherization assistance all have a significant impact on household weatherization adoption. These results provide insight into the potential of policy interventions to increase weatherization adoption.

Sustainable valuation of urban green infrastructure: a case of evidence-based policy making from India

The case study demonstrates that indirect benefits of well-maintained urban parks/gardens and water bodies have positive effect on the residents of the city which is reflected in nearby residential property rates indicated by more willingness to pay (WTP) on the part of people willing to buy them. This behaviour was captured in residential plots' collector rate modification policy decision in Chandigarh city of India during 2016. This step led to generation of better revenue by the city administration, enabling more ploughing back of money towards creation/and maintenance of urban parks/gardens and water bodies (e.g., Sukhna Lake). Cases of such kinds are not common in developing countries and need to be encouraged for sustaining local civic authorities financially.

Outdoor activity involvement and postsecondary status among rural adolescents: Results from a longitudinal analysis

Outdoor recreation and leisure are being promoted in some rural communities as an economic revitalization strategy and an arena for youth development. This research brief reports on a study analyzing a five-wave longitudinal dataset that examined the influence of outdoor activity involvement on postsecondary educational status in a sample of emerging adults from a large, rural county in the northeastern U.S. (N = 114). Differences in educational predictors were found between individuals participating in different outdoor activity types and at different levels throughout adolescence. Multinomial regression found the degree of outdoor activity involvement and parental education levels to predict postsecondary enrollment status two years after high school. Additionally, postsecondary enrollment was associated with living outside the area after high school. Results illustrate the importance of considering the relationship between leisure activities, education, and residential decision making when conducting research on youth and community development in rural areas.

Moving to Improve?: A Qualitative Meta-analysis of Neighborhood Violence and Residential Decision-making among Housing Voucher Holders

Many people poised to move through housing choice voucher programs cite violence as a primary factor in their decision-making. This study synthesizes a body of qualitative data to explore how participants recount their experiences with neighborhood violence and analyzes its relationship to residential decision-making. We find that while participants expressed a desire to move to improve their circumstances, they also recounted how neighborhood violence constrained choice by influencing a multitude of factors in the decision-making process. This shows the stress neighborhood violence places on households and how neighborhood factors constrain housing choice.

Hiding within racial hierarchies: how undocumented immigrants make residential decisions in an American city

ABSTRACTIn the United States, the residential segregation of Latinos from whites has persisted but has fallen between Latinos and blacks. Demographers offer the size of the Latino population that is undocumented as one potential explanation for these patterns. However, little work has examined undocumented immigrants’ first-hand accounts of residential decision-making. Drawing on interviews with undocumented-headed, Latin American-origin families in Dallas, Texas, we explore how lacking legal status relates to residential selection. We find that some undocumented families perceive certain neighbourhoods to be ‘off-limits’, not only because of financial constraints, explicit legal impediments to their tenure, or individual racial preferences, but also because they perceive them as high-risk: Most sample households agree that law enforcement patrols areas with white majorities in order to exclude Latinos and, specifically, the undocumented. As a strategy to minimise the perceived risk law enforcement poses to their families’ stability, some undocumented families in the study report opting into neighbourhoods with Latino majorities in order to ‘blend in’, whereas others describe feeling safe in neighbourhoods with black majorities where they can ‘hide in plain sight’. We demonstrate how undocumented families’ perceptions of law enforcement in neighbourhoods with differing racial compositions may partly underlie trends in residential selection and stratification.

Living arrangement and caregiving expectation: the effect of residential proximity on inter vivos transfer

Informal care by adult children provides important support for frail seniors, yet it is unclear whether this costly service is balanced by parents’ financial transfers. This paper examines how family living arrangements affect parents’ relationship with their children. Specifically, it investigates whether a child’s residence affect parents’ decision in making financial gifts, and whether this relationship is based on their expectation to receive care in the future. Results show that children in closer proximity are more likely to receive transfers from their parents on both the intensive and extensive margins. A closer examination of the effects reveals that the difference can be at least partially explained by the increased likelihood of care provision when a child is living in closer proximity. The findings suggest that today’s residential location could be a signal in indicating a child’s prospect of providing care and thus affects parents’ decision in making financial gifts. It also reaffirms the interdependency between caregiving and residential decisions and calls attention to its roles in shaping intergenerational relationship.

How do food retail choices vary within and between food retail environments?

There is mixed evidence on whether the local food environment explains differences in food choices. It is valuable in such research to use strong research designs, taking account of the endogeneity of household residential decisions. This article offers a literature review, emphasizing two promising approaches in the most recent research: (1) longitudinal studies of supermarket or retailer entry and exit within particular locations and (2) studies of variation in food choices across multiple households within particular locations. We review how these approaches address the endogeneity problem. Because this literature review indicates the importance of understanding variation across households within locations, our empirical analysis uses nationally representative data from USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) to measure the expected values, variances, and intracluster correlations for selected outcome variables and explanatory variables typical of those used in studies of the food retail environment. We find that geographic variation in supermarket proximity does not account for most of the variation of a household’s choice of a primary food retailer and does not account for much of the high-level of variation across households in food security and dietary quality. These results and our review of the literature suggest that food store access may modestly influence food choices, but that other household-level factors may matter more.

Unpacking Summary Measures of Ethnic Residential Segregation Using an Age Group and Age Cohort Perspective

The residential segregation literature has underplayed the significance of age in shaping the ethnic compositions of neighbourhoods. This paper develops an age group and age cohort perspective as a way to unpack summary measures of residential segregation. Harmonised small area data for England and Wales (2001–2011) are used as a case study to explore the potential of this methodology for understanding better the role of age in the evolution of ethnic residential geographies. Our findings demonstrate the age-specificity of residential segregation, for both cross-sectional patterns and change over time. Levels of segregation vary among age groups and age cohorts and between ethnic groups, with a changing pattern of segregation as people age. Exploring change over a 10-year period, we observe that residential segregation decreases during young adulthood for all age cohorts, then increases during the late 20s and early 30s, and continues to increase until retirement. These trends are, for the most, consistent between ethnic groups. Our findings emphasise how residential segregation is a dynamic process with a significant life cycle component, with commonalities in residential decision-making between ethnic groups through the life course.

Demographics and the Dynamics of Recovery: A Latent Class Analysis of Disaster Recovery Priorities after the 2013 Moore, Oklahoma Tornado

Many factors influence decisions made by households impacted by major disasters, including decisions related to rebuilding their homes in situ or relocating to a new home. Our understanding of how recovery priorities play into these decisions, however, is limited, as is our understanding of how these processes vary according to demographic characteristics. This study explored drivers of household residential decision-making after the 2013 Moore, OK, tornado. Using Latent Class Analysis, we examined the dynamic relationship between demographic characteristics, hazard exposure, and recovery priorities, with an emphasis on factors that influenced households to rebuild and remain in their original community. Our results indicate that demographics and hazard exposure dynamically influence the relative importance of several factors households considered in making residential decisions. Implications related to disaster recovery priorities and residential decision-making are discussed, including the potential development of generalizable models for use by emergency managers in predicting housing recovery priorities and prioritizing recovery actions.

A Concept of Value and Sustainable Performance On Affordable High-Rise Residential Decision

The need of residential space for low-income people has to be facilitated in urban spatial planning. Because of people will find affordable settlements in the suburbs so their daily mobility will cause congestion. In addition, the inadequate need for a place for low-income households will result in the proliferation of slums in the middle of the city. The goal of this research is to develop an optimal model in generating affordable high-rise residential design performance to improve the environmental quality and sustainability of urban spatial. The object study is a public housing as an affordable housing and formal settlement. When the cost of energy rises and availability decreasing, the need to provided energy-efficient design become more important. It is difficult to quantify and qualify the importance of values. This paper presents value-based decision to select energy system in an affordable high-rise residential building. Criteria for evaluating value are initial cost, life cycle cost, collaborative function, sustainable function, and integrative function. Model formulates, and its implementation based on application of satisficing option on multi criteria decision-making. Commencing at the design and planning stage, the technical, social, and economic sustainability of building energy needs to be considered.

Examining factors that keep residents with high transit preference away from transit-rich zones and associated behavior outcomes

Many studies on travel-induced residential self-selection assume that travel attitudes are strong enough to influence people's residential decisions. Using quantitative and qualitative methods, this article investigates the impacts of preference for transit and other residential preferences on residential location choice. Employing preference ranking, logistic regression and ANOVA tests on survey data from the Oslo metropolitan area, we find that individuals with simultaneously high preference for transit and low preference for attributes related to households with children are likely to reside in transit-friendly neighborhoods. Transit preference, while important in residential choice, is more so as second tier after other more important preferences related to lifecycle/demographics are satisfied. Individuals who prefer transit but live in transit-poor zones tend to have higher preference for private garden, a larger number of children, lower income, and are older. Variations in access to transit and transit preference have significant influences on transit use. The results of qualitative interviews are also consistent with these findings and substantiate the mechanism by which the built environment and travel preference affect residential and travel choices.

Residential and transit decisions: Insights from focus groups of neighborhoods around transit stations

Despite the momentum of transit oriented development (TOD) and significant progress, research on relationships among built environment, residential location, and travel decisions remains debatable. This study investigates reasons behind residential and transit decisions -- the building blocks for studies of TOD travel impacts. In-depth focus group interviews in three TODs in Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex reveal that social belonging and access to diverse amenities are key features for residential decision regardless of travel preference. Transit decision depends on factors beyond built environment and access to transit service. The findings suggest further investigation of social capital effects and broader benefits of TODs.