Assessment of relationships between user satisfaction, physical environment, and user behaviour in pedestrian infrastructure

Abstract

Does infrastructure shape human behavior, or does human behavior shape infrastructure? Users’ perception about infrastructure, both current condition and future needs, is essential in devising policy decisions. In the transport sector, one of the reasons for several large infrastructure projects not performing at par with the expectations, once they are built, is because the users are not taken into confidence sufficiently. At the same time, it is uncertain to what extent user perception leads to actual behavior change – how many people that say today will walk more if walking environment is improved, will actual do so when the facility is built? The current research measures the users’ satisfaction of present walking environment using a revealed preference survey on factors that include quality of infrastructure, comfort, safety, design, and others, in two different urban settings of a large metropolis – one a newly planned suburb and the other and older and well established area. Results of an ordinal logistic regression model shows that the factors which are likely to significantly influence the overall user satisfaction of pedestrian facilities are buffer, ease of walking, zebra crossings, footpath continuity, night time safety and location. Subsequently, stated preference data was collected and the results of a negative binomial regression model shows that improving footpath continuity has the greatest impact in the likelihood of bringing about a change in user behavior when compared to not only other individual improvements, but also the combined improvement in buffer and ease of walking.

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