Impacts of the built environment on activity-travel behavior: Are there differences between public and private housing residents in Hong Kong?

The built environment impacts individuals’ participation in daily activities and associated travel (or activity-travel behavior). However, it is not well understood how these impacts differ between different socioeconomic groups (e.g. economically advantaged and disadvantaged people) and how neighborhood planning affects the difference. Using data of public housing and private housing residents in Hong Kong in 2010, this study applies the propensity score matching approach to identify differences in activity-travel behavior under different built environment settings for private and public housing residents respectively. We find that density, accessibility and self-containment collectively affect private housing residents’ auto ownership, travel time, trip frequency, and entertainment time spent at home, but have few influences on public housing dwellers. The different built environment effects are partly because the planning standards and guidelines in Hong Kong stipulate the provision of daily facilities and services such as grocery shops/supermarket, primary school and transit in proximity to public housing development. Thus, although economically disadvantaged people have limited transportation resources, neighborhood planning can adequately meet their daily needs even if they are placed in suburban areas.