Cross-border residential mobility, quality of life and modal shift: A Luxembourg case study

It is argued in the life-oriented approach that travel behavior affects life choice and vice versa with resulting impacts on quality of life (QOL). By deepening the analysis of interdependences between daily mobility and life event (relocation) and their relationships with QOL, this article focuses on two challenges. It aims at analyzing how these life events first, encourage travel behavior changes, especially mode choice, and second, improve or decrease people's QOL. By radically changing living context and built environment, relocation also affects routine and satisfaction. These relationships are investigated in the Luxembourg cross-border area, where great differences related to real estate price encourage residential moves from Luxembourg to neighboring countries, while the general decline in public transport efficiency at the border may support car use. We use both mixed and ordered logit models. The first one investigates whether individuals' life-stage changes and residential relocation are significant regarding their mode choice decision. The second estimates individuals' global QOL and the roles of complementary factors (changing housing conditions, built environment, subjective satisfaction, travel time and socio-economic characteristics). The analysis reveals several results. The effect of the different factors is consistent with travel mode choice literature despite the specific cross-border context. Nevertheless, relocation, mainly oriented towards a cross-border suburbanization, significantly increases the probability of using the car for daily activities. These trips and especially the journeys to work are the least satisfactory aspects of daily life after relocation but does not affect the general level of QOL. At the opposite, the better housing conditions after relocation have positive effect on the QOL. From a policy perspective, this life-oriented approach in cross-border context confirms the influence of life events on QOL while it demonstrates a higher importance of housing conditions than spatial constraints on relocation and satisfaction.