Residential Location Choice Research Articles

Determining heterogeneity of residential location preferences of households in Belgium

Residential location choice behaviour is a key component of the complex and dynamic human-environment interactions driving changes in the urban landscape. The residential location choices that households make depend on their socio-economic characteristics, attitudes and life cycle stage as well as the location's properties. The objective of this research was to analyse residential location preferences for different types of households in Belgium by developing a residential location choice model based on the use of regression trees. For each preference group, a discrete choice model was estimated identifying the main factors influencing residential location choices, and how these differ depending on household characteristics. The data-driven approach proposed in this paper enables a transparent interpretation of the main household characteristics explaining differences in residential location choice behaviour, and of the varying effect of location characteristics on residential location choice. Results obtained with the model show that tenure status, education level, nationality and household type successfully discriminate heterogeneous residential location preference profiles in Belgium. Model variables for each preference group demonstrate that not only socio-economic characteristics of the resident population, but also housing price and job accessibility differentially affect a location's attractivity for different household profiles.

Assessing the Efficiency of Household Residential Location Choices

As part of strategic plans, we often see car dependency reduction vision along with strategies to reduce car use and vehicle-kilometers traveled while promoting alternatives such as transit and active modes. It is less common to see strategies to generate more structural changes, even if such change can have much more important and sustainable impacts. Whereas it is well known that home location is one of the key drivers of travel behaviors, it is much less frequent to have planners put forward strategies to encourage people to move and choose their locations more wisely with respect to their needs. This research aims to assess the potential collective gain of an optimal allocation of households to available dwellings. It aims to estimate how inefficient the current distribution is of households among the dwellings with respect to where all household members need to travel. Results show that the household relocations reduce the distances for work and study by 37.9%. This reduction saves an average of 13.8 km per household per day or 4.9 km per work or study trip. If the mode choice remains constant despite the new trip conditions following the household relocations, the total mileage for work and study trips would decrease by 42.8% for car drivers, by 35.2% for car passenger, by 13.3% for school bus, and 34.2% for public transport. As a result of the household relocations, walking and cycling latent trips increased, respectively, from 2.6% to 15.5% and 26.1% to 39.9% of motorized trips.

Linking urban air pollution with residents’ willingness to pay for greenspace: A choice experiment study in Beijing

This study investigates the nexus between urban air pollution and residents’ preferences for greenspace. The two environmental issues could be linked through people’s general tastes for environmental amenities helping to determine residential location choice, implying that residents of heavily-polluted neighbourhoods may care less about environmental amenities in general, including greenspace. Alternatively, high pollution levels could force people to reduce their local outdoor activities and thereby devalue urban greenspace as local recreational resources. Finally, residents of severely-polluted areas may derive additional benefits from greenspace as trees can enhance air quality. To examine these issues, we undertook choice experiment surveys in Beijing to elicit willingness to pay (WTP) for three types of greenspace: a neighbourhood park near respondents’ homes, a city park in central Beijing and a national park outside the city. We then used air pollution data to help explain the spatial heterogeneity in WTP. Neighbourhood parks provide direct air purification services for communities nearby, and our results indeed suggest that respondents exposed to higher pollution levels have higher WTP for a new neighbourhood park. However, we failed to find evidence of a significant effect of pollution on WTP for a new city park or a new national park.

Synergistic and threshold effects of telework and residential location choice on travel time allocation

Much of the literature shows a great interest in debating whether telework has a complementary or substitution effect on people’s travel demand. Relatively fewer studies analyze the modification effect of telework on individuals' activity-travel patterns. This study adopts a novel analytical approach to explore the influences of the duration of telework on sustainable travel. The empirical study builds upon a smartphone-based GPS travel survey conducted in the Puget Sound Region of Washington State. The merit of this research is twofold. We first investigate the threshold effects of the duration of telework and built environment characteristics on the shares of travel time spent riding public transit and engaging in active travel. The results can directly inform telework and land use policies. Then, we examine the synergistic effects of the duration of telework and the built environment on both travel outcomes. The findings suggest well-designed telework provisions could complement compact development policies aimed at shifting from automobile dependency to sustainable travel.

Residential Location, Mobility, and Travel Time: A Pilot Study in a Small-Size Italian Metropolitan Area

This research concerns the topic of Land Use and Transport Interaction (LUTI) models. In particular, the patterns between residential households’ location and mobility choices are analyzed and simulated. The attributes that influence household residential location choices belong to four categories: socioeconomic and mobility attributes of households and/or of their components; land use; real-estate market; transport system. The paper presents the results of a pilot study on households’ location and mobility patterns in the metropolitan area of Reggio Calabria (Southern Italy). The pilot study is divided into two stages. In the first stage, a survey allowed to collect information and identify existing patterns about residential and mobility choices of a sample of households. In the second stage, a residential location model is proposed and some preliminary calibrations are presented in a prototypal way. The pilot study could be extended and improved in terms of spatial extension and sample dimension in order to allow a complete specification-calibration-validation process of the model. The model development can support the land use-transport planning process in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria.

Travel and cognitive dissonance

In this review paper, we reconceptualise the relationships between travel-related attitudes and behaviours using (and considering the applicability of) Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory. According to this psychological theory – developed in the 1950s and widely used ever since − a dissonance between attitudes and behaviour can result in feelings of discomfort, which people will try to reduce by changing either their attitudes or their behaviour. In our interpretation, we focus on two interrelated decision processes linked with travel behaviour, i.e., travel mode choice and residential location choice. Although a considerable number of travel behaviour studies refer to the cognitive dissonance theory in order to explain found results (e.g., changed attitudes), a full examination of the process of cognitive dissonance (reduction) in the travel behaviour literature is currently lacking. Through this critical consolidation of transport literature on the cognitive dissonance topic, we propose future research directions to fill this gap. We argue that the cognitive dissonance theory can provide valuable insights into satisfaction levels with travel and the place of residence, while also helping to explain changes in travel-related attitudes and choices of where to live and which travel mode to use.

The multiplicity of self-selection: What do travel attitudes influence first, residential location or work place?

Residential self-selection has been widely considered as an important issue in quantifying the impacts of the residential built environment on travel behavior and much empirical evidence regarding the nature and magnitude of the self-selection effect has been reported. Nevertheless, people may be based on travel attitudes/needs to self-select not only residential location, but also work place, car ownership, etc. In other words, the impacts of long-term decisions other than residential location choices (e.g., decisions on work place, car ownership, etc.) on travel behavior may also be biased by the self-selection effect. However, self-selection concerning these long-term decisions has not been explored much in the travel behavior literature. The role of residential self-selection would not be properly evaluated if self-selections concerning other long-term decisions were not considered because they are often related. This paper addresses this research gap in the travel behavior literature by exploring the multiplicity of travel-based self-selection. We jointly examine the possible self-selections concerning residential location, workplace, commuting distance and car ownership in an integrated framework, taking into consideration the interrelationships among these decisions. Data are derived from an activity-travel diary survey conducted in 2016 in Beijing, China. We classify the respondents into two groups based on the choice order of their current residential and work locations and conduct a comparative analysis using structural equation models. It is found that self-selection exists in all long-term choices examined in the study. The choices of residential location and work place are found to be mutually dependent. Consequently, both choices have indirect impacts on travel behavior through the other choice.

Factors affecting residential choice in Greater Jakarta

Various factors might affect the choice of residential location. It might be transport- related or not. This paper was intended to identify factors affecting residential choice in Greater Jakarta. 102 respondents asked to complete 52 online surveys and 50 direct interviews. The questionnaires consist of 2 main parts, i.e. the general questions (gender, age, marital status, religion, job, ethnicity, educational attainment, vehicle ownership & use, and family structure) and residential choice related questions (characteristics of residential unit/environment/facility/distance and accessibility). The second part questions were responded by the respondents using 1 to 4 Likert scale from not important at all, slightly important, important and very important as a factor affecting residential choice. A one-sample t-test mean difference with 2.5 (a departure from not important to important with α=0.05. It was found that in general, Respondents perceived that in general, all observed characteristics were important to affect residential location choice except for a few exemptions.

Latent class analysis of residential and work location choices

ABSTRACT This paper developed a two-stage modeling framework for analyzing residential and work location choices with probabilistic choice sets. In the first stage, a household (or a worker) was assumed to select a neighborhood (such as central business district, urban, suburban etc.) to live (or work). In the second stage, the household (or worker) was assumed to choose a specific zone conditional on the selected neighborhood. The neighborhood choice model component takes the form of Manski model with latent choice sets. The model was used to analyze residential and work location decisions in Nashville, Tennessee. The model results indicate significant heterogeneity in the consideration probability of different neighborhood alternatives both in the residential and work location choices. The latent class neighborhood models were found to outperform standard MNL models that assume all decision-makers consider the universal choice set in their decision-making.

Do changes in the residential location lead to changes in travel attitudes? A structural equation modeling approach

Numerous studies have found that travel attitudes might not only affect travel behavior, but also the residential location choice as people might choose a residential location based on their travel preferences and needs (i.e. transport-related residential self-selection). However, it might also be possible that the residential location and travel behavior influence attitudes towards travel. In this study—using quasi-longitudinal data—we analyze how a change in the residential environment affects attitudes towards specific modes, both directly and indirectly through changes in mode frequency (of commute and leisure trips). Using a structural equation modeling approach on 1650 recently relocated residents in the city of Ghent, Belgium, this study indicates that moving to a more urban type of neighborhood improves attitudes towards public transport and active travel. Especially for leisure trips the effects from changes in the built environment on attitudes are partly indirect through changes in mode frequency. This study offers new insights into the links between the built environment, travel behavior and attitudes. We provide further evidence that the built environment influences travel attitudes, but also indicate that these effects are partly mediated by travel mode frequency.

Examining Spatial Heterogeneity Effects of Landscape and Environment on the Residential Location Choice of the Highly Educated Population in Guangzhou, China

The residential location choice of the highly educated population is an important consideration to construct a livable city. While landscape and environment are important factors, few studies have deeply analyzed the spatial heterogeneity effects of landscape and environment on the residential location choices of a highly educated population. Taking Guangzhou as the sample, we built a livability-oriented conceptual framework of landscape and environment, and constructed datasets for highly educated population proportion, landscape, and environment factors, and other influencing factors for Guangzhou’s 1364 communities. Global regression and geographically weighted regression (GWR) models are used for analysis. The GWR model is more effective than the global regression model. We found spatial heterogeneity in the strength and direction of the relationship between the highly educated population proportion and landscape and environment. We find that landscape and environment exert spatial heterogeneity effects on the residential location choice of the highly educated population in Guangzhou. The conclusions will be of reference value to further understand how the spatial limitations of landscape and environment affect residential location choices. This study will help city managers formulate spatially differentiated environment improvement policies, thereby increasing the city’s sustainable development capabilities.

Impact of new rail transit stations on neighborhood destination choices and income segregation

This article examines the neighborhood destination choices made by movers in neighborhoods affected by rail transit investments in the United States between 1970 and 2013 using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The results suggest that of those that move following the placement of a new rail transit station, low-income individuals are more likely to move to more disadvantaged neighborhoods following rail transit investments in their neighborhood when a small share of the neighborhood is covered by the station's service area. If the origin neighborhood is more accessible to the station however, lower-income residents are equally likely to move within the same neighborhood or to a neighborhood of similar socioeconomic status. Middle-to-high income individuals that relocated, particularly homeowners, are more likely to move to higher income neighborhoods, particularly within a few years before opening. These results contribute to the ongoing debate regarding transit-induced gentrification, affordable housing in transit-oriented developments, and public transit's role in shaping residential location choice and subsequent income segregation patterns.

Measuring public service quality: Revisiting residential location choice using emergy synthesis of local governments in Pennsylvania

In this article, we present a study of local governments in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania measuring public service quality and revisiting residential location choice. This study adopts “emergy” (spelled with an “m”), a relatively new unit of measuring energy quality, to quantify the quality of public service. The concept of neighborhood choice has evolved to incorporate distance to center, transportation modes and commute time, match between household income and housing price, availability of public services and education, and own-group preference by ethnic or socioeconomic status. Despite the quality of public service by local governments being identified a critical factor affecting residential location choice, it has received less attention because of the nebulous concept and immeasurable characteristics. The emergy analysis of a local government system allows for testing of incompatible units of a socio-economic phenomenon. This study confirms the conventional residential sorting theory that people tend to travel further for cheaper houses and for better education, but people do not travel further for a higher quality of hard infrastructure such as road network and maintenance.

Does improving public transport decrease car ownership? Evidence from a residential sorting model for the Copenhagen metropolitan area

Car ownership is lower in urban areas, where public transport is of high quality. This suggests that better public transport offers the possibility to relieve the many problems (congestion, pollution, and parking) associated with the presence of cars in urban areas. To investigate this issue, we develop a model for the simultaneous choice of residential location and car ownership by households, and estimate it on Danish data, paying special attention to accessibility of the metro network. We use the estimated model to simulate the impact of an extension of the metro network. We show that for the Greater Copenhagen Area an extension of the metro network decreases car ownership by 2–3%, while the average compensating variation is approximately 3% of household income.

Residential Location Econometric Choice Modeling with Irregular Zoning: Common Border Spatial Correlation Metric

Residential location choice (RLC) predicts where and how people choose their residential location in the framework of land use–transport interaction models (LUTI). This paper seeks an efficient RLC model in the context of irregular zoning of location alternatives. The main current proposals in the field are discrete choice models. In RLC modeling, the alternatives are spatial units, and spatially correlated logit (SCL) is an efficient approach when the analyst cannot pre-define groups of alternatives that efficiently reflect the systematic substitution patterns among the alternatives. The SCL uses the spatial information on the contiguity of the zones to determine spatial correlation among the alternatives. Urban residential location choice usually uses administrative zoning, which is very irregular in many cities (mainly historic cities); however, SCL is not efficient in this context owing to the limitations of the binary contiguity spatial variable employed as a spatial correlation metric (SCM). This paper proposes an extension of the mixed SCL model, with an SCM based on the proportion of common border length in contiguous zones, which is more efficient in the irregular urban zoning context. The proposed model is applied to an urban case study of LUTI RLC modeling with irregular zoning, based on the administrative divisions of the city of Santander (Spain) and is shown to be empirically more efficient than the previous approaches.

Will Millennials Drive Less as the Economy Recovers: A Postrecession Analysis of Automobile Travel Patterns

Personal vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the United States has seen a dip from 2004 to 2014, owing to the recent economic recession. News reports and academic articles relate this change to Millennials’ (those born in the last two decades of the twentieth century) travel patterns. Some researchers argue that the existing mobility patterns of Millennials may not persist as the U.S. economy fully recovers from the Great Recession. This study examines the changes in automobile travel patterns across generations. The empirical study builds on three most recent nationwide travel surveys. Research results reveal that residential location choice and life course events have stronger associations with Millennials’ automobility travel patterns than those of Gen Xers. We also find as personal wealth increases, the Millennials generation will not increase auto mileage as much as the preceding generations. Analyzing the driving distances by trip purposes while accounting for the differences between weekdays and weekends offers timely insights on formulating effective policy provisions for specific periods or planning targets.

Exploring the role of toll road construction on residential location choice in the Jakarta – Bandung region

This study deals with the influence of the construction of a major toll road on residential location preferences in the Jakarta – Bandung region in Indonesia. A hybrid choice model (HCM) was developed to model the effects of socio-economics, travel characteristics, housing characteristics and latent variables on residential location choice simultaneously. The latent variable (LV) model is composed of satisfaction with current neighbourhood and satisfaction with housing. The discrete choice model (DCM) using a mixed logit model (MLM), excluding the latent variables, was also estimated. The models were based on survey data collected from 1500 respondents. The results show that the addition of latent variables that reflect the satisfaction of individuals with neighbourhood accessibility, dwelling size and affordability, led to a higher probability that low-income individuals will move house. Satisfaction with neighbourhood characteristics is more significant than satisfaction with housing to influence residential location choice. Furthermore, high-income earners were willing to pay higher land taxes to live closer than 5 km to the toll road to capture travel time benefits, whereas people in other income segments preferred to live beyond 10 km from the toll gate where housing costs tend to be low. However, spatial location components were found to have a stronger influence on neighbourhood and housing satisfaction levels than socio-economic characteristics.

Evaluating household residential preferences for walkability and accessibility across three U.S. regions

Accessibility has been established as a major planning goal in recent years. However, little knowledge exists regarding how individuals value walkability, transit accessibility, and auto accessibility differently when deciding where to live. To fill this knowledge gap, this study conducts residential location choice modeling across three U.S. regions—Atlanta, Puget Sound, and Southeast Michigan. I find that, overall, all three types of accessibility are important determinants of residential location choice. Transit accessibility has a statistically significant positive influence on residential location choice across all three regions. On auto accessibility, results show that commute time by auto has the greatest influence on residential location choice among all independent variables, but auto accessibility to nonwork destinations appears to be inconsequential. Moreover, walkability is found to be a key determinant of residential location choice in the Puget Sound region but not the other two regions. I argue that these regional differences result from a lack of choice among Atlanta and Southeast Michigan residents, that is, a undersupply of walkable neighborhoods inhibits households in the two regions from living in such neighborhoods. This finding suggests the need for cities and regions to promote pedestrian-oriented development in order to broaden residential choice. The results further imply that, due to housing-supply constraints, households often have to live in a neighborhood with a level of accessibility lower than what they prefer. Transportation and land-use planners should address this “residential dissonance” when applying residential location choice models to predict land-use growth patterns.

ACCESS: An agent-based model to explore job accessibility inequalities

This paper presents ACCESS, an agent-based model for exploring job accessibility inequalities among different social groups. ACCESS allows for investigation on the impact of public transport and land use policies on the residential location of the working population and their accessibility to job opportunities. ACCESS can be adapted to different realities, allowing to represent societies with diverse socioeconomic disparities. A utility function composed of job accessibility and neighborhood status is maximized by agents during the residential location choice process. The model outputs include Lorenz curves considering the accessibility dimension, as well as Gini metrics to support the analysis of interventions impacts on accessibility inequalities. An empirical case study is performed on the municipality of Sao Paulo, which is characterized by high levels of inequality. Five experiments were simulated considering three different socio-occupational groups. The first experiment includes (i) new public mass rail transport lines, and the other four experiments consider the new transport infrastructure from the first experiment and add (ii) new social housing location strategies; (iii) new job locations; (iv) new jobs and different social housing supplies and location strategies; and (v) provision of social housing based on a government housing program. The results show that ACCESS allowed the residential location of different social status groups to be depicted with a high correlation to the observed situation. Regarding the case study, the results indicate that only having interventions on transport system is insufficient to provide a significant change in terms of inequality. Better results that impact inequality are reached with public mass rail transport interventions associated with land use policies with different social housing and job location programs.

Are young adults car-loving urbanites? Comparing young and older adults’ residential location choice, travel behavior and attitudes

Abstract Previous studies mostly indicate that young adults travel less by car compared to their older counterparts, partly due to postponing driving license holding and car ownership. Furthermore, these young adults might also prefer living in urban, low-traffic neighborhoods, further reducing car use. In this study we analyze the residential location choice, travel behavior and travel attitudes of young versus older adults (respectively born after 1984 and before 1985), using 1376 recently relocated residents from the city of Ghent (Belgium). Results indicate that travel mode frequency does not considerably differ between young and older adults, although young adults – compared to older adults – live more often in urban-type neighborhoods. This might be partly explained by young adults’ relatively positive attitudes towards car use and negative attitudes towards walking and low-traffic investments. These attitudes consequently seem to counterbalance the effects of the residential neighborhood on travel mode frequency. The fact that respondents’ travel attitudes are often not in line with their chosen residential neighborhood suggests limited self-selection effects. Results from this study partly contradict earlier findings on young adults’ travel behavior and indicate that further research is needed on the links between travel behavior, attitudes and residential location choice of different age groups.