Incentives for relocating to regional Australia: estimates using a choice experiment

Inter-regional migration plays an important role in regional labour markets; for instance, by moving labour from a region with high unemployment to a region where there are unfilled vacancies. The study uses a discrete choice experiment to investigate the willingness to move for work of a sample of individuals from New South Wales and South Australia, states which have had pockets of relatively high unemployment, to Karratha (Western Australia) and Emerald (Queensland), two regional centres with relatively high demand for labour in 2012. The aim is to understand how individual and job characteristics are related to the willingness to move. The study is unique, in that it estimates the monetary value of the incentives required for individuals

to accept job offers in a region different from that in which they currently live.