| Title |
Perception of Pedestrian Environment and Satisfaction of Neighborhood Walking - An Impact Study based on Four Residential Communities in Seoul, Korea |
| Authors |
Park So-Hyun ; Choi Yee-Myung ; Seo Han-Lim ; Kim Jun-Hyung |
| Keywords |
Neighborhood Walking ; Pedestrian Environment ; Perception ; Satisfaction ; Impact ; Factor Analysis ; Ordered Logit Model |
| Abstract |
While many previous studies investigated how individual elements of neighborhood forms, such as density, mixed use, street connectivities, impacted the physical activities including walking, their implication for designing walkable neighborhoods deemed minimal, if not unapplicable. Their results tended to reveal that the direct correlations between the neighborhood environment and the walking behavior are "small but statistically significant." This study takes a different research approach to the issue by considering the process of perception and satisfaction about the overall pedestrian environment, which would eventually impact the residents' decision to walk. The goal of this study is to provide research evidences of how pedestrian environment of the neighborhood is perceived comprehensively as meaningful perception factors and how those perception factors influence the overall satisfaction of neighborhood walkability. The research methods include surveys and statistical analyses. The survey was conducted in four representative residential neighborhoods of different walking environments, such as Gahoe, Sungsan, Sanggye, Hangdang, in which total 713 effective answer sheets were gathered. For the statistical analyses, the factor analysis and the ordered logit model were applied. As results, four perception factors were drawn from the nineteen measure variables, such as 'pleasantness' 'safety' 'vitality' and 'complexity' that are significant to the satisfaction of neighborhood walkability. The order of four factors, according to the analysis, runs from the most pleasantness, safety, complexity, and the least vitality, along with interpretation and implications for four residential neighborhoods' pedestrian environment. This study contributes to the advancement of research methods, in which the mechanism of residents' walking satisfaction in relation to their perception of neighborhood pedestrian environment is articulated in a more practical and persuasive way than the previous studies did. The further studies, based on the findings of this study, would elaborate the measure variables grouped under the each perception factor, so that they could be translated into design languages to plan for more walkable neighborhoods. |