Which cities do we like to live in? Empirical analysis of employees’ attitude to cities

Abstract

Attracting talented employees to the cities leads to the concentration of high-quality human capital, and thus to the successful economic and social development. So far we do not have enough knowledge about what kind of the city amenities contribute to the positive attitude of the employees to the cities where they live and / or work. Exploring that could be important for research in the frameworks of the theories of local labor markets and compensating differentials, as well as in the design of social policies in cities. This study is based on the unique microdata collected by the authors using surveys of the employed population of 20–64 years old in the administrative centers of the Ural Federal District, a total of 2,520 respondents. We applied cross tabulation to measure the strength of the relationship between employees’ attitude to the cities and satisfaction of the city amenities, individual characteristics of the employee, individual wages. The results showed that there is a linear relationship between employees’ attitude to the cities and their individual wages, as well as between employees’ satisfaction of the city amenities. The obtained results can be explained based on the economic theories approach as well as on the concept of city branding.