How to develop the walking environment for its ‘consumers’? A conjoint answer derived from people's perception of link and network

Abstract

Future-oriented urban planning will continue to uphold the principles of accessible and walkable cities. To develop better urban walking infrastructure, people's perception is central to the process, and this is why pedestrians may be considered ‘consumers’ of the walking environment. However, existing evaluation tools conduct walking network assessment objectively using spatial data and rarely assesses the ‘perceived’ network attributes. The current research evaluates users’ perception towards ten link and three network attributes using conjoint analysis. A pictorial survey instrument was created for recording users’ responses in two Indian cities. Results shows that, both link and network attributes were perceived to be more important than only link attributes. Respondents preferred ‘accessibility’ and ‘continuity’ over ‘width of sidewalk’ and ‘aesthetics and surface quality’, when presented with both link and network pictorial profiles. This study was able to define two instruments for practitioners—relative importance and tolerance level. Hypothetical ‘products’ could be simulated with high importance and low tolerance attributes and the process shows that a higher preference was seen for ‘products’ with both link and network level improvements.