Impact of Transportation Convenience, Housing Affordability, Location, and Schooling in Residence Choice Decisions

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of housing affordability, which can be denoted as the ratio of housing price (HP) and monthly expense per person (EXP), travel time to the city center, distance to a subway station, and schooling on residents’ apartments purchasing behavior in Dalian, China. The paper employed a logit model based on stated preference (SP) data. Results show that travel time to the city center (by subway) and housing affordability have negative effects on individual utility. This reveals that residents tend to buy apartments near the city center based on their income. Considering a series of negative external factors, distance to a subway station is positive to utility. Moreover, the willingness for residents to pay for different attributes varies according to their levels of EXP. At last the elasticity of different variables is analyzed and 180 additional data points are used to test the model. The testing result shows that the model can satisfy the basic requirement.