Residential Preferences for Interregional Migration in Sweden: Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Geographical Determinants

Abstract

Policy makers are showing increasing interest in factors that make places attractive for prospective new residents. This paper focuses on residential preferences for interregional migration and aims to explore what place attributes people would value highly if they considered migrating. Special attention is given to differences in preferences between population subgroups in terms of demographic, socioeconomic, and geographical determinants. An ambitious prestudy with 390 respondents was carried out to ascertain relevant place attributes for the main study. The main study was carried out via a survey sent to a national sample of 5000 Swedes, of whom approximately 53% took part. The results give valuable information on how demographic, socioeconomic, and geographical aspects determine residential preferences in Sweden, and make some contributions to methodological issues on researching preferences in a migration context.