Beyond demographics : human value orientation as a predictor of heterogeneity in student housing preferences

In the Netherlands, there is currently both a quantitative and a qualitative shortage in student housing. New housing units need to be built to accommodate the growing population of students, and existing ones need to be adapted to better fit the students’ needs. However, whilst housing preferences are studied extensively in the literature, less research has focused on the housing needs of students. In the current study, students’ housing preferences, and individual differences within these preferences, were studied with the use of a conjoint choice experiment. Within this experiment, hypothetical student houses were defined by systematically varying nine housing characteristics: price, size, kitchen sharing, bathroom sharing, cycling time to city centre, cycling time to campus, outdoor space, walking time to supermarket, and walking time to park. The participants were asked to select the most preferred housing from multiple sets of two student houses. A total of 589 completed online questionnaires were analysed. With the use of a mixed logit model, the importance and influence of the housing characteristics and taste heterogeneity was measured. Individual differences were explained with the use of socio-demographics and human values. The results show that heterogeneity is present in the housing preferences of students. These differences can be explained partly by socio-demographics and human values. Human values are thought to give additional understanding of differences in students’ housing preferences on top of socio-demographics