On visiting real-estate agents or real-estate information websites, we can easily get information on houses or rooms, but it is difficult to know more about the city or area in which the houses or rooms are located. Particularly, it is difficult to determine the atmosphere and comfortability of the area. On the other hand, cities and areas are to be strictly chosen as population decreases. It is necessary to understand how cities and areas are evaluated and how they change in the future for planning them. This paper aims to determine the tendency of residential location choice and evaluation indexes of the choice including atmosphere and comfortability using a questionnaire survey.
This paper applied modal theory for the analysis. We defined the concept of "modality" as "total mode of being." This theory enables us to analyze residential location choice from comprehensive viewpoints, treating both quantitative information like transportation or facility location and vague information like atmosphere or comfortability as equal evaluation indexes. Moreover, we assumed a process model of residential location choice based on the modal theory: a person grasps modality in his/her daily life, and takes background into consideration like his/her own property, memory, conditions of seeking houses or rooms, preference and so on, then chooses a concrete residential location.
The survey items included "property" of the residents, "housing conditions" like family structure and transportation, "residential location" shown as urban scale and area type, and "evaluation indexes" for the location. The housing conditions and residential location were asked for both the present and future expected residence in order to analyze the process of making choices and the future trend. As for evaluation indexes, we selected 53 indexes that involved both convenience and facility location, and atmosphere and comfortability. The survey was conducted in June 2016, and 1,244 samples were collected through the survey.
Chapter 3 analyzed "evaluation indexes." We found that not only existing indexes like convenience and facility location but also those like atmosphere and comfortability were highly valued in choosing a residential location. Additionally, we made clear that some indexes are important because most residents put weight on them but other indexes are also important as they make significant differences between residents.
In Chapter 4, we added "property" and "housing conditions" into our analysis. The main analysis methods included extracting highly evaluated indexes based on property and residential conditions, and visualizing the change of residential conditions from the present to future. The analysis made clear that males tend to prefer urbanized areas with good public image and females like safe and convenient areas. Families with children preferred to live in detached houses in suburban areas that have good education level. Single households had an opposite tendency toward child-raising families.
Chapter 5 analyzed "residential location" using the same methods as in the previous chapter. We found that the population tends to move to bigger cities in the future, but cities with 0.5-1 million people can be a good size with a fascination for both urban and suburban areas. As for area type, urban cores, small shopping districts, and areas with middle-size apartment buildings will become more popular. On the other hand, residential areas without gardens and mixed areas of houses and factories are lowly evaluated as a living environment.
These results are valid as information for house hunters and future urban planning. We plan to develop this study by introducing financial conditions and actual area for concrete analysis.
