Determining the Driving Factors o f Co mmuting: An Empirical Analysis f rom Greece

Commuting refers to the act of daily traveling, between two locations, for employment purposes and suggests a multidimensional phenomenon in Regional Science, which is determined by social, economic, geographic and political factors. This paper conducts initially a literal approach of the phenomenon and further proceeds to an empirical ordinal regression analysis for the spatial network consisting of two Greece regions (Thessaly and Sterea Hellas) that verifies the theoretical framework. The theoretical review contributes to the formulation of the independent (predictor) variables and generally to the construction of the ordinal regression model and the corresponding empirical approach, in order to specialize the theoretical framework to the Greek case and to recognize the spatial patterns that rule the commuting phenomenon. Some conclusions that are made, come to an agreement with the well established theories of gravity modeling, expanding city and binomial law and others elect an amount of interesting contradictions to the theoretical framework.