Allan Pred

Allan Richard Pred (born July 28, 1936 in New York , † January 5, 2007 in Berkeley ) was an American geographer .

Life

Pred attended Antioch College from 1953 to 1957 and received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1962. PhD.

In 1962 he was first assistant professor of geography at the University of Berkeley , then in 1971 professor there. From 1979 to 1988 he was head of the geographic faculty at Berkeley. In 2005 he became professor at the Graduate School there. Since 2005 he has been a corresponding member of the British Academy .

Pred was married to a Swede and moved regularly between Berkeley and Sweden.

Behavioral location theory according to Pred

Based on concepts of diffusion geography by Torsten Hägerstrand (1952–1953) and others who traced the spatial distribution and dissemination of innovations back to learning processes and information processes, Allan Pred developed a new type of location-theoretical model from 1967 onwards. In contrast to the deductive, neoclassical location theories of Alfred Weber , Walter Isard and David M. Smith , Pred tried to explain the entrepreneurial choice of location using behavioral science .

While the neoclassical theories all implicitly assumed an objective point of view and a uniform level of information, Pred assumed that entrepreneurs have different information and skills to choose a location.

According to his theory, the choice of a business location depends on what information (e.g. on transport costs, labor costs, etc.) is available to the entrepreneur and how capable he is of evaluating this data in order to find the optimal position. In addition, other (non-material) values ​​could lead to an economically suboptimal choice. Or the entrepreneur cannot evaluate the data, but chooses a very favorable location because he imitates the behavior of successful competitions.

In addition, Pred integrates the temporal component by assuming that information, the level of information, skills and values ​​change over time and can lead to company relocations.

Basis: decision making

In Pred's model, the decision-making of the respective decision-maker is fundamental for the location decision of the individual company. When a decision is made, a distinction can be made between the following stages of information processing, which companies master differently due to differences in financial and human resources:

• Information acquisition : It is associated with costs and therefore depends on the available resources. The reception of information by humans is a subjective process as the filtering of information that appears suitable from the infinite amount of information in the environment.
• Information processing : It too depends on the available resources. Even with high quality information processing, all possible alternatives can never be checked by the decision-makers. Decision-makers therefore tend to come to terms with a solution that is only subjectively satisfactory.
• Decision : The goals and value system of the decision-makers contribute significantly to the decision-making process.

Behavioral Matrix

Since an analysis of all possible location alternatives is often not possible or makes sense due to financial considerations and the often necessary time urgency, the location search space actually used by companies often only contains a small section of the possible alternatives, for example the locations in only one region. Spatial profit zones arise within this search area, ie profitable location areas around a local profit-optimal location. The model shows that even at first glance, irrational or random location preferences with a small number of evaluated alternatives make a profitable, albeit suboptimal, location decision possible.

For the empirical investigation of location decisions, Pred developed a "behavioral matrix" in which companies enter the quality and quantity of their information on the one hand, and their entrepreneurial ability to use this information on the other. Pred distinguished the following cases:

• For companies that have a good level of information and use information efficiently , it is very likely that they will opt for a profitable production location. However, the profit-optimal location is not necessarily chosen: Often, however, sub-optimal locations within a profit zone are chosen for family reasons or subjective values.

• Companies with an average level of information and average information processing opt for suboptimal production locations that are far from the optimal location, but are still within the profit zones.

• Badly informed companies with poor problem-solving capacity actually choose locations that are outside the profit zones and thus not competitive in the long term. Here, however, subjective decision-making reasons can lead to randomly profitable location decisions.

However, companies can also make a profitable location decision by "imitating" successful companies located at one location.

Pred's conclusions from the empirical investigation were:

• The level of information and entrepreneurial performance on the one hand and the quality of the location decision on the other hand are very likely to have a strong positive correlation.
• Entrepreneurs with the same level of information and the same capacity to use information can choose different locations based on personal preferences or coincidences.

Dynamic viewing

By including time as an additional dimension, Pred expanded his approach to include additional aspects: The level of information available to decision-makers can increase over time. New communication technologies can facilitate the flow of information within the company or between the company and the corporate environment. The ability to process information can also improve through new technology, as well as through the opportunity to learn from one's own mistakes and those of others and to copy successful location decisions. The decisions of the companies are thus becoming more and more rational in the long term and work towards a relocation of the business locations to the optimum location.

The level of information and information processing quality of individual companies can, however, also decrease over time. B. with changing location requirements of the companies and location conditions of the location alternatives. Learning from one's own mistakes is hindered by the fact that an earlier poor choice of location may lack the financial means to invest in new technologies and skilled personnel that are necessary for the competitiveness of a new location.

criticism

The behavioral science approach tried for the first time to understand the actual decisions made when choosing a location. Behavioral explanatory models could be empirically confirmed several times. It was critically noted that psychological-subjective motives for choosing a location were overrated, since the classic location factors hardly play a role in this model and the conditions of physical geography and transport are not taken into account. Just as neoclassical theory neglects the "homo psychologicus", the behavioral approach largely ignores the "homo oeconomicus".

literature

• Gunther Maier / Franz Tödtling: Regional and urban economics. Location theory and spatial structure . 2nd Edition. Springer, Vienna a. a. 1995 ISBN 3-211-82683-1
• Markus Pieper: The interregional location choice behavior of industry in Germany. Consequences for municipal location marketing. Schwartz, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-509-01658-0
• Ludwig Schätzl: Economic Geography 1. Theory. 9th edition. Schöningh (UTB), Paderborn 2003, ISBN 3-8252-0782-X

Web links

• Institute of Regional and Urban Developement, UC Berkeley ( Memento of March 22, 2004 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Allan Pred in the US Social Security Death Directory (SSDI), accessed October 5, 2018