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Title:

Interactions Among Race or Ethnicity, Attitude, and Crime: Analyzing Walking Trips in the South Bay Area

Accession Number:

01127275

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

Previous studies in the travel behavior literature have often overstated the impacts of the built environment on travel behavior while not adequately taking sociodemographic, attitudinal, and sociological factors (e.g., neighborhood crime) into account. This paper addresses this gap through a case study of individual walking trips in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County. Relying on a unique and extensive data set sampled from eight diverse communities, this study uses regression analysis using both unstratified and stratified samples to determine whether there are significant differences in walking behavior across race/ethnicity, income, and gender while controlling for sociodemographic factors, attitudinal factors, and neighborhood crime rates. In addition, this study tests for the effects of the built environment on walking trips across sociodemographic groups. The results from this study show that factors influencing walking behavior differ across sociodemographic groups, and certain sociodemographic groups are more influenced by attitudes towards neighborhood accessibility and safety, impacting an individual’s decision to walk. Violent crime rates also have a significant negative impact on walking trips for nearly all sociodemographic groups, even after controlling for built environment variables. The results of this study demonstrate that walking behavior is complex and is influenced by sociodemographic, attitudinal, and sociological factors, which vary across sociodemographic groups. Furthermore, the results suggest that sociological and attitudinal factors such as crime and perceptions of crime have a stronger impact on walking behavior than built environment factors, which may have implications for transportation planning and urban design at the neighborhood level.

Monograph Accession #:

01120148

Report/Paper Numbers:

09-3462

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Joh, Kenneth
Boarnet, Marlon G
Nguyen, Mai Thi

Pagination:

21p

Publication Date:

2009

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2009-1-11 to 2009-1-15
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

DVD

Features:

References (26) ; Tables (5)

Uncontrolled Terms:

Ethnicity; Sociodemographics

Subject Areas:

Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2009 Paper #09-3462

Files:

TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Jan 30 2009 7:52PM