Determinants of the intention to recommend overseas migration to a city: The perspective of foreign residents

Due to the decreasing population growth rate, some cities have struggled to increase their populations, and attracting foreigners as residents may be considered an alternative solution to this problem. The present study aims to investigate the relationships among the city image as a tourism city, place identity, quality of life domains, overall life satisfaction, and intention to recommend short- or long-term overseas migration to a city while controlling for respondent characteristics. Using a data set obtained from a foreign resident survey conducted by the metropolitan government of Seoul, South Korea, this study finds that despite differences in the influences of the explanatory variables, the intention to recommend overseas migration is most strongly related to place identity, followed by city image. Of the quality of life domains, the influence of the social environment is the strongest and positive, while residential environment and educational environment are negatively related. The theoretical and practical implications for attracting foreign migrants to a city are discussed.