Urban environmental quality and out-migration intentions

Many large and industrial cities all around the world suffer from out-migration. It is usually connected with a loss of qualified labour force, suboptimal use of housing and city infrastructure, decrease in investments, etc., resulting in limited development potential. This article investigates the importance of urban environmental quality—especially pollution—for potential out-migration. In addition, it brings two innovative aspects to earlier studies on environmental migration: (a) exploring the influence of subjective perception of pollution, not only its objective level (corresponding to the theory of planned behaviour), (b) examining the different migration strategies instead of one binomial ‘stay or leave’ strategy. A representative sample of 3845 individuals from the city of Ostrava, Czech Republic (the third largest city in the country), which ranks among cities with the most polluted air in the Europe, was used for this purpose. The results suggest that (a) both the quality of natural environment and its subjective perception represent important and highly significant predictors of out-migration intentions, (b) different kinds of pollution lead to different migration strategies, (c) drain of young and educated workers is further strengthened by low quality of the natural environment.