Place recommendations and migration

Abstract

The influence of personal recommendations on decision-making is well-established. To date, however, most research appears to have focussed on decisions of less importance. This study explores how place recommendations may have an impact on internal migration. Drawing on extraordinarily voluminous survey data, based on approximately half a million responses in Swedish municipalities between 2010 and 2018, the analyses of this paper are focused on the extent to which people would recommend friends and acquaintances to move to their respective municipalities, on the locational features influencing such recommendations, and on the relationship between recommendations and net-migration. Contributing to research on the role of social networks in migration research, the results reveal both a widespread tendency among inhabitants to give positive place recommendations and a very strong positive association between place satisfaction and place recommendations. In addition, a tentative analysis suggests that highly recommended municipalities benefit in terms of net-migration and, hence, population growth.