Commuting Behaviour and Residential Choices by University Students

Italian university students often attend a university located in a nearby city, and choose between commuting from their home town and living in the city where the university is located. The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that influence this choice. A conceptual framework is developed and an empirical investigation is performed analysing as driving factors the distance between home town and university town, rental costs, travel time, weekly frequency of attendance, course year in which the student is enrolled, student’s age and family income. According to the results obtained the critical isochrone varies from 65 to 75 km, and the monetary value of one hour of travel time is 13 euros. Finally, the impact of the policies currently implemented by the University of Trieste is analysed.