Modeling satisfaction with the walking environment : the case of an urban university neighborhood in a developing country -

Abstract

In light of the numerous benefits of increased walkability, which is commonly defined as the extent to which the built environment encourages conducting walking trips, an increasing number of research efforts have been brought about on the topic by urban planners, transportation engineers, health scientists and many others. This paper aims at developing a framework, using structural equation modeling, that enables better understanding (and possible quantification) of the overall level of satisfaction with the walking environment based on attributes of the walking environment. Such a framework, in turn, allows identifying to what extent these attributes have an effect on the perceived level of satisfaction with the walking environment. As a case study, this paper investigates the level of satisfaction of students of the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, with the walking environment of the university surroundings. This analysis is conducted by developing two structural equation models for estimating the causal relations between the level of satisfaction with the attributes of the walking environment and the level of satisfaction with the walking environment overall. The first model examines the sample of students who are frequent on-foot commuters, whereas the second model studies the remaining sampled students who typically conduct on-foot trips in the university surroundings for purposes other than commuting (shopping, eating, leisure, etc.). The resulting models, specific to the case study, indicate that specific neighborhood attributes have the greatest impact on the level of satisfaction with the walking environment for both samples, the attributes being the ease of pedestrian crossing, sidewalk blockage, cleanliness of sidewalk, vehicular traffic on streets and motorcycles going against traffic on one-way streets. Diversifying activities along the streets serving the neighborhood has a positive impact on the level of satisfaction with the walking environment for both groups; there are, however,