Study shows people are willing to travel further to the supermarket in order to live among ‘similar’ neighbors

People are willing to travel 10 minutes further for their daily shopping if this means they do not have to live near people with a different migration background. This is evident from research conducted by sociologists Jochem Tolsma of Radboud University and Rob Franken of Utrecht University. Their study is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

It also shows that people without university diplomas are the only group that has no difficulty interacting with people with a different level of education.

“People prefer to associate with people who are very similar to themselves,” explains Tolsma. “When given the choice, they opt for a neighborhood or association with ‘people like us.'”

Tolsma and his colleagues asked thousands of people to choose between neighborhoods they would like to move to and communities (such as sports clubs or cultural organizations) they would like to join. The neighborhoods and communities differed in terms of social composition and other relevant characteristics such as financial costs, travel time and social cohesion.

Our kind of people

The results show that people consistently choose environments with more peers, people with the same migration background and the same level of education. The only exception was that respondents without a university degree had no problem interacting with people with a university degree.

Franken says, “Dutch people without a migration background were willing to travel 10 minutes longer every day to do their shopping if this meant they could live in a neighborhood without residents with a Turkish or Moroccan migration background, rather than a neighborhood where a quarter of the residents have that background.”

Reinforced effect

The researchers also observed that when someone lives in a neighborhood or belongs to a sports club where there are many people like themselves, their preferences for their own group are reinforced.

Tolsma states, “People actively follow their preferences in their daily lives. This finding makes it likely that segregation and preferences for one’s own group reinforce each other. We must try to prevent deeper social divisions in society, because these divisions erode social cohesion, which could pose a threat to democracy.

“One thing that could help is to require sports clubs to meet certain quotas in order to promote diversity. Or to make neighborhoods so attractive that people from different backgrounds are willing to interact with each other more often.”