Modeling of Job Mobility and Location Choice Decisions

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for modeling continuous decisions about changing jobs that individuals make over the course of their lives. The key objective of the research was to develop disaggregate econometric models for decision making about job mobility and location choice to implement longitudinal job mobility behavior of people within a dynamic microsimulation-based integrated urban modeling system. The paper includes two behavioral model components: (a) a job mobility model and (b) a job location choice model. The models were implemented empirically with a retrospective survey of the greater Toronto and Hamilton area in Ontario, Canada. The first component investigated the timing of job mobility with the use of a competing risk duration modeling approach for four event types: a job switch, a return to school, short-term unemployment, and withdrawal from the labor force. The second component, job location choice, was empirically estimated by applying the discrete choice methodology. One of the key features of the model was that it examined the influence of current employment in making decisions about the next job location and specified a gain–loss utility structure by the prospect–theoretic, reference-dependent choice modeling approach. A mixed logit model was developed to account for unobserved heterogeneity in the location preferences. These models were expected to be implemented in the Integrated Land Use, Transportation, Environment (ILUTE) modeling system, which had recently been updated with comparable disaggregate behavioral residential location models.