Migration intentions: Data from a Field Study in Albania

This paper documents data about migration intentions collected through a survey conducted between September and December 2019 in the city of Tirana (Albania). The information contained in the data belongs to three main categories: (i) the socio-demographic characteristics of the subjects interviewed (ii) their migration intentions in the form of rankings of preferred destinations within Europe as well as worldwide, and (iii) measures of their risk and time preferences. The data collection involved two different approaches. First, incentivized lab-in-the-field laboratory games were used to elicit risk and time preferences of the subjects. Second, a randomized experiment with respect to the preferred migration destinations was used to unveil the importance of information about potential destinations when individuals rank destinations. Descriptive statistics of the data indicate that approximately 72% of the subjects in our sample express the desire to migrate in the future. The country ranked as most preferred European destination is Germany, while worldwide the US rank first. About 57% of the subjects consider the level of earnings at destination as the most important attribute to decide where to emigrate. We find further that, when provided with official statistics about earnings at destinations, 26% of individuals change their most preferred destination. Interestingly, the data suggest that this change is twice as much prevailing for those with no intention to migrate than for intended movers. Finally, whether we provide more than just information about earnings or not does not seem to matter much.