Love or hate it: the role of heat and humidity in attracting residents to a regional tropical city

Many regional and rural areas of the Global North face declining populations and challenges in attracting and retaining long-term residents. Despite a well-established literature on the determinants of internal migration, it is still not clear why some regions fail to attract internal migrants despite employment opportunities and access to amenities. Here we explore the role of an under-researched factor, a hot and humid climate, using Darwin, acity in northern Australia, as a case study. Drawing on the aspiration-capability framework, we conducted a national online survey to examine willingness to live in, or to avoid, Darwin and the underlying reasons (n = 1653). Results from descriptive and regression analysis show that close to one in six Australians is willing to move to Darwin, particularly men, families with children, heat tolerant individuals and those with a good knowledge of the city's economy and climate. Using Principal Component Analysis, we identify three main barriers which together explain 69 % of the variation in not considering moving to Darwin. These include amenity deficiencies (46 %), geographical barriers, including the combined impact of heat and remoteness (13 %) and high costs of living (10 %). These demonstrate the presence of place-specific barriers, with heat one among several rather than being a single reason for avoidance. Notably, preconceptions about Darwin and peer influence are, besides age, the strongest determinants of perceived barriers to living in Darwin. As climate change is set to intensify, policies aimed at attracting individuals to non-metropolitan tropical cities should prioritise addressing and mitigating negative preconceptions, including those related to climate.