Decision plan nets of housing choice: A critical evaluation of the reliability and validity of this technique

Policy-makers and housing providers use housing simulation models to evaluate the effects of changes in policy. Notably, housing allocation and building schemes are two such policy fields. The parties who use these models are especially interested in the unintended outcomes of change, such as short-term disequilibrium. Decision support models can be used to evaluate the processes on the regional housing market, given certain housing-policy scenarios. Besides their practical application, these models may make a theoretical contribution as well. They may bridge the gap between individual housing choice behavior and aggregate outcomes. This gap has been called the micro-macro debate in social sciences (Groenewegen and Huigen, 1992). The assumption is that the aggregate outcome - in this case, the regional (mis)match between demand and supply - can be clarified if individual choice behavior is better