A MODEL OF RESIDENTIAL LOCATION CHOICE USING UTILITY THEORY

This paper was presented at Session 28-Transport Planning Techniques 2. Existing models of urban growth and structure are unable to incorporate many of the factors which are relevant to residential location choice. This shortcoming is widely acknowledged, but has been justified in terms of computational efficiency, or by claiming that the factors usually considered are statistically the most significant. In this paper, residential location models are examined and their relative advantages discussed. It is suggested that economic utility models, a relatively new group of models, are potentially very useful for analysing individual residential location choice. To illustrate the role of economic utility models, a framework within which models may be classified is proposed. The framework is based upon three steps in the process of relocation, namely the decision to move; the decision to consider locating in an area, and the choice of a particular house. By dividing the location process into these stages, it is possible to explicitly analyse the trade-offs involved in each stage. In this paper, the economic utility modelling approach is introduced and the theoretical aspects outlined. A brief review of empirical work related to the model is presented (a). (TRRL)