Residential search and joint decision-making in the rural environment : a case study from lowland England

This study is an attempt to deepen our understanding of the residential relocation process in rural areas by examining the role of partners in the decision making process, search and eventual decision. The study was undertaken during the house price boom of the mid- to late-1980s and the slump of the early 1990s, thus allowing consideration to be given to the role of fluctuations in the housing market within the migration decision process. The theoretical basis of the study was grounded largely in behavioural geography, although it drew heavily from other approaches in human geography, in particular the post-modern perspective on gender issues and the more structuralist viewpoint of the political economist. The study adopted a two-tiered methodology. An extensive approach was used to provide a focus on the broad patterns of relocation decisions in the rural areas of North Dorset and East Northamptonshire. This utilised a large randomised sample of households distributed across the settlement hierarchy within the two study areas. A questionnaire survey was conducted providing responses to housing search questions relating to reasons for moving, choice of area and village. An intensive approach was then used to enable consideration to be given to the causal processes involved in joint decision making, and how this affected residential migration decision making. This utilised two detailed samples: one of households who had bought a property at the peak of the house price boom of the late 1980s, and the other of households who had moved during the recession of the early 1990s. Detailed structured interviews were used to elicit responses on a range of issues relating to the roles, both observed and perceived, played by partners in their housing choices and strategies adopted during the search process. A number of different methods were used to analyse and evaluate the data. The extensive survey was coded, inputted and analysed using SPSS, whilst the interviews used measures of dominance and congruence, decision plan nets and other comparative techniques coupled with analysis of the responses to questions.