Do citizens of a city that owns a local public airport have attachment to the airport and use it?

In this research, it is investigated whether passengers living in a city with a local public airport have attachment to the airport and tend to use it. Focusing on the Greater Kansai area with three airports and Kobe City that owns Kobe Airport as an example, an empirical analysis is conducted by Nested logit model using micro data. The result of the basic model shows that passengers living in Kobe city prefer Kobe Airport compared to other passengers. Additional analysis based on a questionnaire survey revealed that passengers who are attached to Kobe Airport choose it because they love it, which means that the non-economic factor of attachment influences passengers’ decisions. The results of this research suggest that enhancing attachment to the airport might be a possible idea for policy makers of airport cities to increase passengers of it