If the relationship between people's evaluation of living environments and their migration motivation is quantitatively clarified, it can become supportive information for policy making. Although there are various destinations for migrants, the U-turn migration phenomenon--in which people return to their hometowns--is one of the migration types that can improve population disparities in Japan. This is because promoting U-turn migrations have a higher possibility of increasing the populations of rural cities than recruiting new residents. The 8 th Annual Population and Social Security Survey [9] showed that approximately 20-40% of people left the prefectures in which they had originally resided. Furthermore, those whose hometowns were rural areas migrated mainly to prefectures located in the three metropolitan areas, especially to prefectures with larger cities. By contrast, people whose hometown was in the three metropolitan areas mainly moved within these metropolitan areas. This means that large populations have outflowed from rural areas to metropolitan areas, increasing the difficulties for rural areas in attracting residents from the metropolitan areas. Therefore, the migration of people from their rural hometowns is one of the main reasons for population disparities. In some cases, to improve these population disparities, it may be useful to increase the population of rural areas by recruiting the new residents who have never resided in such areas. However, a previous survey [10] showed that people living in metropolitan areas were more hesitant to live in the rural areas than those living in other rural areas. On the other hand, 54.5% of the residents of rural areas were people who had moved due to a U-turn migration. The ratio of U-turn migrants was higher than that of new residents who had migrated from other regions. This implies that although numerous people emigrated, U-turn migrants still played an important role in maintaining urban functions in rural areas. Many small, rural Japanese governments have actively promoted people's U-turns with policies. Moreover, the same survey demonstrated that individuals' hometowns have more of a special meaning for them than other destinations. Further, it mentioned that people want to live in regions with which they have strong associations (e.g., the region of birth and/or upbringing). [PERSON] [11] also indicated that people often chose to return to places they had once left, despite having other alternatives. According to the results of previous surveys, one of the reasons for the recent population disparities in Japan is people's continuous migration from their smaller, rural hometowns to larger cities in metropolitan areas. However, it also means that there are many potential return migrants (i.e., people whose return migration to their hometown contribute to the improvement of population disparities) stay yet in metropolitan areas. Moreover, it is assumed that these individuals have a more positive attitude toward migration to their hometown than toward migration to other regions where they have never lived, provided that living conditions in both prospective regions for migration are almost the same. Indeed, in the rural areas, U-turn migrants are becoming accounts for a relatively large percentage of all rural residents. Therefore, in the current Japanese situation, promoting U-turn migrations to smaller hometowns in rural areas is one of the ways to improve population disparities than recruiting new residents. However, because of the numerous gaps between the living environments (e.g., convenience, economic condition) of metropolitan areas and rural cities, it is difficult to make a sufficient number of potential U-turn migrants return to the rural areas. In fact, the poor living conditions are a concern for people who intend to return to their hometowns [12]. Especially in small cities, the development of living environments is considered an important task to attract more people, as well as provide employment opportunity [13].