Rural residential preferences for house design and location: insights from a discrete choice experiment applied to Ireland

Abstract

Living in the countryside/rural areas has, in recent decades, become a matter of personal choice for many people. Various researchers have investigated people's motivations for wanting to make this move. However, there has been rather little investigation of the factors that cause people to choose one type of rural property or rural location over another. This paper reports on research undertaken in Ireland in which discrete choice experiments are combined with other survey data to examine the relative influence of factors such as house design, house location and journey times. The paper provides insights into the relative strength of such considerations, including the influence of the 'rural idyll'. The results have potential implications for planning in rural areas and the type of properties that could be needed to encourage moves to more nucleated settlements.

Keywords:

• discrete choice experiment
• housing preferences
• rural planning
• migration

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Science (Project: Migration and Social Change in Rural Ireland) and the Environmental Protection Agency's STRIVE Research Programme (Project: Sustainable Rural Development: Managing Housing in the Irish Countryside). Thanks are also due to the referees for their helpful comments.

Notes

1.  Census figure is approximate depending on definition used.

2.  Ideally, for logit analysis a threshold R² of .20 would be sought.