Accessibility Trade-Offs in Household Residential Location Decisions

The literature for residential location choice is deficient in two aspects. First, many studies model location choice as a static choice, with no memory of the past. Second, current understanding of household tradeoffs between attributes is limited. These two issues are addressed by developing and estimating a residential location model that accounts for prior locations by using the Puget Sound Panel (1989–2002) data set. Four types of accessibility attributes are examined: work, open space, retail opportunity, and recreation. A comparison between the proposed model and the existing literature model demonstrates the superiority of the former. Prior commute distance, open space, and recreation opportunity are all shown to influence current residential location choices.