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Factors influencing university students' accommodation choices: risk perception, safety, and vulnerability

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Abstract

The mitigation of human and societal losses is among the guiding principles of the United Nations’ Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, but their implementation requires actions to address the needs of vulnerable categories. Higher education’s students can be considered in this perspective, due to their tendency to live in modest and inexpensive accommodation, without being necessarily integrated in the local community and its safety networks. Despite student’s mobility and housing patterns have been studied consistently, the implications of their choices and risk perceptions remain a marginal topic in the scientific debate on disaster reduction. In this paper, we investigate which factors influence students’ decision to rent an accommodation, focusing on understanding their risk perception and safety awareness. The research analyses a case study in Central Italy, where we surveyed 338 students of the University of Ancona. Our results highlight that safety is not the paramount factor influencing students’ choice for an accommodation and that not all the students were able to define the risk level of the city they live in. Instead, we show that students considered the rent as the most important factor influencing their choices, followed by the proximity of the accommodation to services. Our conclusions suggest that decision makers should integrate vulnerability reduction strategies on student housing plans to meet the target of proposed by the Sendai Framework, promoting actions at complementary levels on education, training and awareness. Finally, we propose that those elements should be better investigated in future researches.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the Gulliver University Students Association for the help in recruiting and gathering the students who participated to the study. A deep gratitude goes to Ms Cristina Casareale and Ms Marina Ortolani from UNIVPM for their precious help during the data collection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università Politecnica Delle Marche, Ancona, Italy

    M. Magni

  2. Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London, London, UK

    G. Pescaroli

  3. Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    A. Bartolucci

Authors
  1. M. Magni
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  2. G. Pescaroli
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  3. A. Bartolucci
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Correspondence to A. Bartolucci.

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Ethical statements

Data collection and analysis were carried out following the policies adopted by the Università Politecnica delle Marche (UNIVPM). The questionnaire used for the data collection explicitly stated the scientific purpose of the study survey and on the use of data; Each responder provided verbal informed consent prior to participation and voluntarily decided whether to participate or not. The authors collected no identifying participant data. In the document we referred to the Italian national law DL 30–6-2003, n. 196, “Codice in materia di protezione dei dati personali” (Code for the Protection of Personal Data) considering that UNIVPM does not have a specific ethics committee for social research

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Magni, M., Pescaroli, G. & Bartolucci, A. Factors influencing university students' accommodation choices: risk perception, safety, and vulnerability. J Hous and the Built Environ 34, 791–805 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-019-09675-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-019-09675-x

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