Non-linear influence of regional contexts on return migration intentions:A comparative study between the place of origin and destination
Return migration has become a notable socio-economic trend in the new stage of China's urbaniza-tion,and the analysis of its driving mechanism has received extensive academic attention.As a micro behavior,the re-turn of migrants is not only affected by personal and family factors,but also closely related to external environment.However,existing studies have focused on the role of individual factors,but not enough research has been conducted on the relationship between regional contexts and return migration.We introduce a gradient boosting decision tree model in the field of machine learning,based on the data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey,with the re-turn intention as the response variable and the regional contexts—Both in the place of origin and destination—As well as migrants'personal and household factors as the explanatory variables,focusing on the non-linear influence of the regional contexts on the return migration intentions and the threshold effect.The results show that:1)The total contribution of the local contexts of the place of place of the origin and destination to the intentions of the migrants to return is 44.1％,which is an important factor influencing the return intentions,and the contribu-tions of the two places is roughly equal.Among these,medical and health resources and air pollution are ex-tremely important in both places.In addition,economic growth in the place of origin is also important for the return intention of migrants,while the climatic condition in the place of destination is more important;2)There are both non-linear and linear relationships between local contextual factors and migrants'intention to return.Among them,medical and health resources,basic education resources,air pollution have obvious non-linear ef-fects on the return intention,while economic growth and temperature conditions have mainly linear effects;3)The influence of individual factors on return intention is mainly nonlinear effect.There is an irregular U-shaped relationship between age,migration duration and return intention,and the non-linear influence of household in-come is more complex.There is an obvious threshold effect between household housing expenditure and re-turn intention,and a negative correlation between migrant's education level and return intention.This study in-corporates the local contexts of the place of origin and destination into the analytical framework for the mech-anism of return migration,identifies the relative importance of the local context and individual characteristics of the two places on the return intention of the migrants,and reveals the specificity and complexity of internal return migration in China,which contributes to deepening the research on migration in the new era and provides scientific reference for policy makers.
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