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Urban environmental quality and out-migration intentions

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A Correction to this article was published on 15 June 2021

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Abstract

Many large and industrial cities all around the world suffer from out-migration. It is usually connected with a loss of qualified labour force, suboptimal use of housing and city infrastructure, decrease in investments, etc., resulting in limited development potential. This article investigates the importance of urban environmental quality—especially pollution—for potential out-migration. In addition, it brings two innovative aspects to earlier studies on environmental migration: (a) exploring the influence of subjective perception of pollution, not only its objective level (corresponding to the theory of planned behaviour), (b) examining the different migration strategies instead of one binomial ‘stay or leave’ strategy. A representative sample of 3845 individuals from the city of Ostrava, Czech Republic (the third largest city in the country), which ranks among cities with the most polluted air in the Europe, was used for this purpose. The results suggest that (a) both the quality of natural environment and its subjective perception represent important and highly significant predictors of out-migration intentions, (b) different kinds of pollution lead to different migration strategies, (c) drain of young and educated workers is further strengthened by low quality of the natural environment.

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Notes

  1. The annual average level of PM2.5 in the Czech Republic was reported in all its regions up to the level of 35 μg/m3 in 2016 (CZHI, 2016), which corresponds to ‘excellent air quality’ according to the 4-level Chinese national PM2.5 classification (see Li et al. 2017). For an international comparison of air quality in Ostrava, see e.g. IQAir AirVisual (https://www.airvisual.com), which ranked Ostrava, with the mean level of PM2.5 at 30.1 µg/m³, as the 16th most polluted city in Europe in 2018.

  2. As the low employability of the unemployed in Ostrava (approximately 70% of them are unemployed longer than 12 months; Kurník 2018) questions their potential for the development of the city, the analysis focused exclusively on the employed, i.e. productive labour force. Moreover, it can be expected that the migration of unemployed, compared to productive labour force, differs significantly in many important aspects, which might bias the results and their applicability for preventing or even reversing the out-migration of qualified and productive labour force from Ostrava.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Faculty of Economics, VSB—Technical University of Ostrava within SGS Research Grant ‘The role of migration and knowledge economy for developing and emerging economies’ (No. SP2018/151).

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  1. Faculty of Economics, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Sokolská třída 33, 702 00, Ostrava, Czech Republic

    Jiří Balcar & Jan Šulák

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Correspondence to Jiří Balcar.

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Balcar, J., Šulák, J. Urban environmental quality and out-migration intentions. Ann Reg Sci 66, 579–607 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-020-01030-1

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