Factors influencing university students' accommodation choices: risk perception, safety, and vulnerability
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Factors influencing university students’ accommodation choices: risk perception, safety, and vulnerability M. Magni1 · G. Pescaroli2 · A. Bartolucci3 Received: 13 April 2017 / Accepted: 14 May 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract The mitigation of human and societal losses is among the guiding principles of the United Nations’ Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, but their implementation requires actions to address the needs of vulnerable categories. Higher education’s students can be considered in this perspective, due to their tendency to live in modest and inexpensive accommodation, without being necessarily integrated in the local community and its safety networks. Despite student’s mobility and housing patterns have been studied consistently, the implications of their choices and risk perceptions remain a marginal topic in the scientific debate on disaster reduction. In this paper, we investigate which factors influence students’ decision to rent an accommodation, focusing on understanding their risk perception and safety awareness. The research analyses a case study in Central Italy, where we surveyed 338 students of the University of Ancona. Our results highlight that safety is not the paramount factor influencing students’ choice for an accommodation and that not all the students were able to define the risk level of the city they live in. Instead, we show that students considered the rent as the most important factor influencing their choices, followed by the proximity of the accommodation to services. Our conclusions suggest that decision makers should integrate vulnerability reduction strategies on student housing plans to meet the target of proposed by the Sendai Framework, promoting actions at complementary levels on education, training and awareness. Finally, we propose that those elements should be better investigated in future researches. Keywords Housing · University students · Risk perception · Vulnerability · Safety · University accommodation
* A. Bartolucci [email protected] 1
Università Politecnica Delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
2
Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London, London, UK
3
Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
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1 Introduction Over the past 40 years the mobility of students has grown considerably as consequence of the globalization of higher education; the number of students who studied abroad raised steadily since the 1970s, growing fourfold between 1975 and 2008 (Beine et al. 2014). In the same period, the expansion of higher education in Western countries have had strong consequences on the housing market, challenging the provision and development of student housing in many college towns (Thomsen and Eikemo 2010). The higher pressure on the private market and issues related to student’s accommodation, have become a concern for both urban planners and managers, increasing the relevance to this field of research. Nowadays, the literatu
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