Residential Quality and Revealed Housing Preferences in Lagos

This part of the book focuses on the results of the principal component analysis (PCA) and multinomial logit (MNL) regression analysis performed on the residential quality of existing housing choices already made by the respondents. The results of analyses presented give information on the nature of associations that exist among the residential quality variables, the important components that account for variations in the data, and the housing choice formation of home seekers based on the contextual residential quality variables and individual characteristics. Although there seems to be in reality a slight difference between preference and choice, in housing studies the two terms are conceptually the same. Empirical studies on renters’ housing behavior have generally regarded housing preferences and housing choices as synonymous, and it is only in terms of variable operationalization that scholars make any serious demarcations. This study, however, uses both preferences and choices interchangeably. Discussion in this section is therefore pursued along four levels: patterns of residential quality variables that influence housing choices, spatial pattern of PCA scores on locations, housing choice modeling results and summary.