This paper investigates how migration and location choice decisions depend on a large set of location characteristics, with particular focus on measuring the importance and nature of non-monetary costs of moving. We employ a stated-preference approach to elicit respondents’ choice probabilities for a set of hypothetical choice scenarios, using two waves from the NY Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations. Our stated probabilistic choice approach allows us to recover the distribution of individual-level preferences for location and mobility attributes without concerns about omitted variables and selection biases that hamper analyses based on observed mobility choices alone. We estimate substantial heterogeneity in the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for location characteristics and in moving costs, both across and within demographic groups. We find moving costs to be strongly associated with attachment to the current neighborhood and dwelling and to social networks. Our results indicate evidence of sorting into current locations based on preferences for location attributes as well as a strong negative association between respondents’ non-monetary moving costs and their moving expectations and actual mobility decisions.

本文研究了迁移和位置选择决策如何依赖于大量的位置特征，特别关注衡量迁移非货币成本的重要性和性质。我们采用陈述偏好方法，利用纽约联储消费者预期调查中的两波数据，得出受访者对一组假设选择情景的选择概率。我们陈述的概率选择方法使我们能够恢复个人水平对位置和移动属性的偏好分布，而无需担心遗漏变量和选择偏差会妨碍仅基于观察到的移动性选择的分析。我们估计人口群体之间和人口群体内部的位置特征和移动成本的支付意愿（WTP）存在显着异质性。我们发现搬家成本与对当前社区和住宅以及社交网络的依恋密切相关。我们的结果表明，有证据表明基于对位置属性的偏好以及受访者的非货币移动成本与其移动期望和实际移动决策之间的强烈负相关来分类到当前位置。