AN EVALUATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS’ APARTMENT PREFERENCES: A REAL WORLD STUDY IN A NEWLY URBANIZED CITY

This paper presents an evaluation of higher education students’ apartment preferences with respect to multiple criteria. In order to find out the importance rankings of these criteria and determine the optimum apartment option conjoint analysis method is used. Location, renter, room, price, floor, age were identified as attributes. 343 students participated in the study by rating sixteen apartment profiles with different combinations of above mentioned six attributes. According to the results, number of rooms, price and location attributes have the greatest influence on students’ decisions and these are followed by age, floor and renter attributes. Additionally the optimum apartment option is a central, 0-5 years aged, 3 bedroom and 1 living room apartment, rented by the householder with a price of 300-400 Turkish Liras. As an evaluation of a real world decision problem, the outcomes will help real estate agencies, householders and constructing firms in probable future decisions. Researchers who will perform a study in this field will be able take advantage of the results as well. disadvantages. While some of the students prefer to study in their hometowns, others leave their family homes for HE