Analysis of the Influence on Interregional Migration by the Region's Policy Priority: Measurement of policy priority sensitivities using text mining

Interregional migration is one of the most important issues for the vitalization of the regional economies. What is the factor in changing the regional populations? Numerous factors have been used in past empirical analysis, and many researchers have noticed that using various kinds of explanatory variables concurrently is rather difficult.

This paper challenges the problem by creating comprehensive explanatory variables. Applying a text mining method against the text data of speeches of the governors of the 47 prefectures in their prefectural assemblies, we quantitatively measure the sensitivities of the region's policy priority: (1) economic policy, (2) social policy, and (3) culture policy.

Our study finds a positive correlation between the number of movers and the destination's sensitivities of policies [(1) and (2)] in the case of distances over 300km; the destination's sensitivity of policy (2) in the case of distances under 100km; and both the destination's and origin's sensitivities of policy (3) in the case of distances under 300km. We also find a negative correlation between the number of movers and the origin's sensitivities of policy (2) in the cases of distances over 100km and under 300km.