A BEHAVIORAL VIEW OF MOBILITY AND MIGRATION RESEARCH

Responding to an explosion of cross-disciplinary research in the fifties and sixties, geographers seized upon the behavioral approach as a way of overcoming the inadequacies of theories based upon rational-man assumptions. They have since developed a facility for obtaining subjective data and interpreting the processes underlying spatial activities. Recent migration and mobility research has focused upon environmental cognition, place preference, mental maps of movement behavior, the role of search, and the motives of stayers as well as movers. The main stress has been upon concept development and model formulation. Future research is likely to be increasingly concerned with space-time paths, asymmetric flows, and non-normal populations. Although the behavioral approach has helped expand the set of relevant variables, there is a continuing need for accumulating meaningful data sets and for more replication of experiments.