Survey: 35,000 Estonians commute regularly to Finland
04.10.2012, 13:14At least 35,000 Estonians travel regularly between Finland and Estonia, reveals a new study by the University of Tartu's Department of Geography.
The study looked into the movements of mobile phones owned by Estonians, Helsingin Sanomat wrote this week.
Those commuting regularly between the two countries spent more than 60 days a year in Finland.
“This group consists primarily of individuals who either work or study in Finland and who have their Estonian mobile phones turned on while in Finland”, says Professor Rein Ahas, the leader of the research project.
The extensive study utilised the mobile positioning and ICT data from people’s mobile subscriptions to look into their spatial mobility between Estonia and Finland.
Hence individuals whose mobile phones were switched off while in Finland were left outside the scope of the study.
Professor Ahas and researcher Siiri Silm published the results of their study for the first time in the Tuesday issue of the Estonian daily, Postimees.
Finland is visited at least four times a year by 79,000 Estonian mobile phone subscribers, a figure that accounts for nearly a quarter of all the Estonian visitors to Finland.
“Most likely these individuals, who travel to Finland on a regular basis, either work there, or have very tight work, study, or family connections to the country”, Ahas and Silm write in Postimees.
People do not travel to Finland for work only from the nearby areas in the Tallinn region.