Factors that influence rural young people’s intention in migrate from rural to urban areas

Purpose We explored factors influencing the intention of rural young people to migrate to urban areas, based on the Rational Action Approach (RAA), adding the “self-identity” construct. Design/methodology/approach Data from 187 young rural people were collected and analyzed using SmartPLS (3.3.3) software to perform partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis in two stages. Findings In the first stage, the assessment of the measurement model indicated that rural youths’ intention to migrate to urban areas is influenced by reliable reflective constructs such as experiential attitude, injunctive subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and, inversely, self-identity. Meanwhile, the second stage revealed that rural youths’ beliefs regarding urban life stress do not affect experiential behavioral beliefs. Beliefs about cooperatives do not influence injunctive normative beliefs, and beliefs concerning the settlement's infrastructure do not impact control beliefs. Research limitations/implications This study uses the intention of rural young people in the Itamarati Settlement to migrate to urban areas as quickly as possible as a dependent variable and not as an actual migration. This is a common limitation in RAA studies in the agricultural domain. Originality/value This study provides a methodological contribution by employing the hierarchical component model (HCM) approach to estimate, specify and validate the hierarchical structure of higher-order constructs as reflective-formative composite models. Furthermore, our study highlights the importance of experiential attitude in shaping rural youths’ intention to migrate to urban areas. Thus, the adoption of hierarchical modeling based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) broadens the scope of analyses on migration intention, contributing to a more holistic understanding of the psychological and social determinants that influence this phenomenon.