The prevalence of vacant houses, propelled by societal issues such as declining birth rates, ageing populations, and an excess of housing stock, has emerged as a significant challenge for cities and construction projects in Japan and several other countries (Gu & Asami, 2016; Suzuki & Hino, 2018). The negative externalities of vacant houses, which negatively impact the surrounding environment, affect not only the neighbourhood characteristics of residents but also land prices in the vicinity (Benediktsson, 2014; Sadayuki et al., 2020). In the context of contemporary social dynamics, the need for redistributing populations and social resources between central and satellite cities increased attention (Westerink et al., 2013; Lee et al, 2015; Mouratidis, 2019). Concretely, focusing on the perspective of residential mobility, He and Zhang (2023) concluded that residences in satellite cities are often larger than those in central cities, so residents living in houses with larger floor areas are likely to remain in satellite cities rather than moving to central cities based on the experience of Beijing, China. A similar tendency has also been indicated from global experience including France (Segú, 2020), the U.S. (Myers et al., 2023), and South Korea (Park et al., 2021).
Compared with the complex urban dynamics of central cities, the phenomenon of vacant houses in satellite cities is more prevalent and identifiable (Hino et al., 2022; Nishiyama, 2020). However, vacant houses focused on central cities in global metropolitan areas including all metropolitan counties in the U.S. (Zhu et al., 2024), Shenzhen (Liang, 2021), Guiyang (Shi et al., 2022), Chengdu (Zhang et al., 2023), Shenyang (Williams et al., 2019), China, Tokyo (e. g., Sadayuki et al., 2020), and Utsunomiya city (Nishiyama, 2020), Japan. Although some previous works (e.g., Baba & Asami, 2017; Baba & Hino, 2019) have addressed the vacant house issues in satellite cities, empirical exploration of vacant house distribution with various neighbourhood characteristics remains a major research gap.
Focusing on the relationship between neighbourhood characteristics and vacant houses, it is essential to consider the factors influencing people’s choice to reside in satellite cities. Factors influencing living satisfaction include the presence of green spaces, accessibility of public transportation, proximity to urban public spaces, and overall convenience in daily life might be critical (Tao et al., 2022; Shen et al., 2021; Chiang et al., 2015; Zhu & Wang, 2023; Kikuchi et al., 2022), while the demands might hugely differ by age group (Zhuang & Ye, 2023). As scholars (e.g., Szabó et al., 2014; Ouyang, 2017) emphasised that residents are less likely to consider areas with lower convenience levels as their preferred choice for residence, we assumed that living convenience might be an important factor in the occurrence of vacant houses in satellite cities.
Vacant housing occurs as a consequence of the mismatch between housing supply and demand, (Molloy, 2016; Madanipour, 2018), this suggests the considerable impact of housing supply on the occurrence of vacant homes. Concretely, in satellite cities of Japan, housing supply issues such as moving due to insufficient living space or inability to find tenants have been indicated (Toda City, 2018; 2023). It has been clarified that the unit floor area is the major factor driving the growth of vacant houses from the global experience of East Asian countries including China (Yang, 2023), Japan (Baba & Hino, 2019), and Taiwan (Chiang et al., 2015). However, it has not been specifically determined to identify which size of the area of housing supply leads to the greatest number of vacant houses. Moreover, the policy may be influential on the occurrence of a vacant house. Cho (2020) indicated that the release of urban renewal plans significantly influenced the value of residential properties in the surrounding area, which might also contribute to the decrease in vacancy in the neighbourhood. Based on the experience of Mexico, Monkkonen (2019) further indicated the federal housing finance policy has higher vacancy rates overall, and the relationship is strong in central as well as the satellite cities. Similar policy interventions have also been discussed in South Korea (Park et al., 2021), and Taiwan (Hsiao, 2022) etc. Policy support in the satellite cities context might thus be a potential factor affecting the occurrence of vacant houses.
Based on the above review, the comprehensive relationship between the distribution of vacant houses and various neighbourhood characteristics including living convenience, housing supply, and policy support in satellite cities, and the distribution of vacant houses remains unclear. By clarifying the effect of each neighbourhood's characteristics on the occurrence of vacant houses, this study aims to elucidate the underlying mechanism to explain the phenomenon of vacant homes in satellite cities.