Europe: Psychographic Positioning of Expat Host Countries

How do expats see their local neighbors and their new home? This chart visualizes how expatriates describe various countries around the globe.

In the chart for Europe, two regional clusters struck us as intriguing: The lower left quadrant, indicative of general friendliness combined with social conservatism, is occupied exclusively by Europe’s Mediterranean south. The opposite corner – dynamic, but distant – belongs to two Scandinavian nations (Denmark and Sweden), as well as the Netherlands.

For this series of charts, we asked expats a number of questions about how they’d describe their current country of residence and especially the people. Questions included, for example, “would you say they are rather innovative or traditional? More reserved or more outgoing?” Responses were collected on a rating scale of one to seven.

The answers to the various questions were sorted into two categories referring to broadly defined pairs of opposites (emotional/rational, traditional/dynamic). The values from the various rating scales served as the basis for assigning coordinates on each axis. Thus, you can place each country within the coordinate system.

According to the respective place in the coordinate system, you can see at a glance how expats perceive their destination. This chart does not present any objective facts about those countries, but rather their subjective image among expatriates living there.