Rural-urban mobility in Thailand: A decision-making approach

An individual behavioral model of the decision-making process for rural-urban mobility is applied to longitudinal data from an area of Northeast Thailand where circular rural-urban movement dominates. The individual-level variables included in the model are: recent mobility history, urban social contacts, information about urban areas, evaluations of various locations, migration plans, and actual movements in the period subsequent to an initial interview. The empirical results provide relatively strong support for the model. From the standpoint of intervention, information appears to be a key variable in the mobility process.