Mobility experience and mobility decision-making: An experiment on permanent migration and residential multilocality

In the course of increasing labour market flexibility, more complex forms of circular mobility, such as residential multilocality, have evolved. A life course approach may help understand moving intentions and moving behaviours across the life span. However, the dependencies between various phases of circular residential mobility in individual biographies have been under-explored. Applying a general cost-benefit approach, we assume that a previous experience with circular mobility may help reduce uncertainties in decision-making on subsequent residential mobility, and may strengthen specific mobility dispositions. A factorial survey experiment was employed to analyse whether and how the prior experience with residential multilocality affects subsequent decision-making on permanent migration and residential multilocality. A sample of academic staff of a university for science and technology in Switzerland (ETH Zurich) received hypothetical job offers in order to measure their mobility intentions. Results show that, on receiving a sufficiently beneficial job offer, multilocality is slightly favoured by respondents having experience in this kind of mobility. Migration costs impede migration intentions and encourage intentions for multilocality. The assessment of the transition costs varies and housing costs play a minor role. When considering multilocal living, respondents with and without experience with residential multilocality exhibited substantial differences in how transition and housing costs are evaluated. This was not the case, however, when they considered migrating.