Using gravity models for the evaluation of new university site locations: a case study

A fundamental aspect of competitive spatial models is the choice behaviour of potential customers to patronize a facility. Most of the models used to describe this phenomenon are essentially based on the adaptation of Newton’s law of gravitation to the economic case (gravity model). This paper shows an application of this model to describe the behaviour of potential students in the choice of a university site. The results provided by the model have been compared with the actual data and show that the gravity model can describe the behaviour of potential students with good approximation.