Analysis of cross-border commuters’ spatial mobility between western regions of Hungary and Slovakia

Abstract

Commuting, defined as daily traveling for employment purposes, has gradually grown in importance in the past decades in Eastern European countries. According to Eurostat, although the freedom of movement may have encouraged cross-border commuting in the EU, it accounted just for 0.9% of the EU-28 workforce. Between the highest number of cross-border commuters, we can find Slovakian (147 thousand), and Hungarian (111 thousand) workers. We chose this topic because there has been a significant increase in the willingness to commute for economic reasons in recent years, and we want to explore the reasons of this. In the case of both examined countries, the inhabitants of the western regions are characterized by high willingness for cross-border commuting. Due to this reason, in own research, we conducted a questionnaire survey in the western regions of Hungary and Slovakia. The results indicate that there are similarities between Hungarian and Slovakian commuters. The regression analysis clearly showed that commuter satisfaction is most affected by the variety of jobs offered and the level of wages.