Abstract:

With rapid growth of housing market in urban China, urban residents have more freedom in location choice, which also demonstrates many new characteristics. Based on the data from a special designed survey of location choice in five large cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chongqing, this paper empirically analyzes the location choice behavior of urban residents and the influencing factors using the ordered logit model. The factors influencing location choice can be divided into two groups: household level variables and city level variables. The former group includes income, employment location and preference of environment; and the latter group comprises housing price, suburbanization process and the infrastructure construction in the suburb. The empirical results show that these variables are all significant in the ordered logit model and consistent with theoretical analysis. Higher-income people still prefer to the locations nearer to the city center, and the immature state of infrastructure construction and service in suburb constrains the suburbanization process in Chinese cities. These empirical findings have important implications for policy-makers and developers.

Key words: location choice, ordered logit model, residential location