The Korea Local Administration Review

There is a lack of empirical studies dealing with the perception of university students or job applicants in innovation cities, despite the fact that public agencies relocated should hire by more than 30% from those who graduated in the cities by 2022. In order to address the gap, the present study attempted to analyze the influencing factors of juniors and seniors’ preference for public sectors in a innovation city. The results obtained from the logistic and ordered logistic models indicated that both prosocial and extrinsic motivations were positively associated with preference for public sector, whereas intrinsic motivation presented statistically insignificant estimates. In addition, we also found that the students who graduated from high schools in the innovation city were more likely to prefer public sector employment than others. Based on the results, we suggested policy implications that can improve the effectiveness of employment of local university graduates in innovation cities.