Why live far? — Insights from modeling residential location choice in Bangladesh

Abstract

Increasing commute distances often lead to increased auto-dependency and is a major problem in many developed as well as developing countries. While in developed countries, the propensity to commute long distances generally originates from the preference to work in the core of the city and live in the suburb or periphery, in developing countries, the trend is often quite the opposite. For example, in Bangladesh, people generally have a strong preference to live at the heart of the major cities even if they work at the peripheral areas of the city, in another city or in a rural area. Further, it is also not uncommon to maintain split-families where the earning member of the family lives near the workplace while the rest of the family is based in a big city (subject to affordability). These phenomena lead to substantial increase in Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) and add burden to the transport infrastructure.The focus of the research is to explore the key factors that induce middle and upper-middle class commuters in Bangladesh to live away from their workplace and/or maintain splitfamilies. A case study is conducted using Stated Preference (SP) surveys conducted among the faculty members of two universities: one located at the periphery of the capital city and the other quite far away. Discrete Choice Models are developed using the collected data. Results reveal that albeit some differences, for both cases, the choices are strongly driven by quality of the education institutes and the house rent. Factors like gender, income and car-ownership, which traditionally play a strong role in the context of developed countries, are found to be of less significance.The models, though estimated with limited data, provide useful insights about the factors that drive residential location choices in the context of a developing country and can help in formulating policies for encouraging people to live closer to their workplaces and thereby reduce commuter VMT.

Commuting distances to local non‐farm workplaces and out‐migration: The case of Northeast Thailand

“…The review found the following. First, Choudhury and Ayaz () in a review of 45 studies that focus on commuting distance to workplace with relation to residential location as a deciding factor in whether a family moves or not, or migrates, found that most studies are concerned with metropolitan or urban areas in developed countries with few studies having been done in developing countries. Other studies in developed countries (Clark et al, ; Sandow, ; Shuttleworth and Gould, ; Shuai, ) also address this aspect of commuting, but as case studies in urban and peri‐urban areas.…”

“…As Choudhury and Ayaz () point out in their review, almost all studies of commuting patterns focus on developed countries. The literature search for this paper notes a further limitation of previous commuting studies, almost all, whether with a geographic focus of developed or developing countries, discuss commuting as it relates to suburban‐to‐urban, peri‐urban to urban, ex‐urban to urban, or rural‐to‐urban.…”

Sector-Wise Exploratory Analysis of Household Residential Location Choice in the African Context: Empirical Evidence from Benin City, Nigeria

“…Others have assumed that housing market, dwelling characteristics and real estate values such as housing quality and pricing are endogenous to the choice process (e.g. Choudhury & Ayaz, 2015;Sermons & Koppelman, 1998;Kumarage, 2007;Cervero, 1998;Frenkel et al, 2013;Jun et al, 2013;Zhuge et al, 2016;Yi & Lee, 2014).…”

Toll Roads in Indonesia: Transport System, Accessibility, Spatial and Equity Impacts

“…Furthermore, numerous studies have explored the factors that affect residential location choice. Important determinants that influence housing choices include the characteristics of dwelling and neighbourhood, accessibility, socio-demographic characteristics, as well as an individual's lifestyle or preferences (latent factors) (Choudhury & Ayaz, 2015;Olaru, Smith, & Taplin, 2011;Tillema, van Wee, & Ettema, 2010). Travel preferences may also influence residential location decision.…”

“…For instance, pensioners tend to choose environments that are quieter or close to relatives (Gobillon & Wolff, 2011), while young people who just graduated prefer to live closer to employment opportunities or city centres. Housing characteristics, such as house price, mortgage rates or rent cost (Choudhury & Ayaz, 2015;Olaru et al, 2011;Tillema et al, 2010), housing quality (Molin & Timmermans, 2003;Ozturk & Irwin, 2001), tenure type (Eluru et al, 2008;Frenkel, Bendit, & Kaplan, 2013), and the length of residency (Böheim & Taylor, 2002;Clark, 2013), also play a significant role in residential location choice. Some studies revealed that travel characteristics, such as car ownership (Cervero, 1998;Prashker, Shiftan, & Hershkovitch-Sarusi, 2008) and regular mode preferences (Abraham & Hunt, 1997;Pinjari, Pendyala, Bhat, & Waddell, 2011) have significant effects on housing choices as well.…”