A study on the identification of influential walkability correlates of the physical environment

Abstract

Aims of increasing non-automated transportation and increasing rates of obesity have increased the interest in promoting walking resulting in many research works investigating about influence of physical environment on walkability. Since most of such works are based on pedestrian environment of developed countries, there is a need to have similar investigations for countries like Sri Lanka which have fairly poor pedestrian infrastructure. This research attempts to cover such gap of identifying walkability correlates, through three psychological experiments. Firstly, a set of 130 potential correlates were proposed by analyzing 220 walking decisions. Secondly, this set was filtered to 55 based on degree of influence. Using those, 60 streetscape photos were evaluated to identify 14 walkability correlates. Further, using principal component analysis, six components (Traffic safety in walking area, Design comfort of walking area, Environmental appearance, Illegal Invasion of Pedestrian space, Shade and Sense of Space) were identified.