Built environment diversities and activity-travel behaviour variations in Beijing, China

Donggen WANG*, Yanwei Chai, Fei Li

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

143 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The association between built environment and travel behaviour has received considerable research attention in recent years. In an attempt to contribute to this growing literature, this paper investigates the connections between urban built environments and activity-travel patterns in Beijing, the capital city of China. We characterize the built environment in Beijing and establish associations between built environment and activity-travel behaviour in terms of car ownership, time spent for out-of-home activities, and daily trip frequencies and travel time. Activity diaries from 1119 respondents living in ten different neighbourhoods were collected by face-to-face interviews. A household-level structure equations model incorporating intra-household interactions is developed to analyse this data. The empirical results show that residents of different types of neighbourhoods in Beijing demonstrate significant differences in car ownership, time spent for out-of-home activities, trip rate, and travel time. Further, the characteristics of the built environment are found to have more significant impacts on the activity-travel behaviour of the male head than that of the female head.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1173-1186
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Transport Geography
Volume19
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2011

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Transportation
  • Environmental Science(all)

User-Defined Keywords

  • Activity-travel behaviour
  • Beijing
  • Built environment
  • Structural equations model
  • Time use

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