Abstract
We investigated the effects of pedestrian environments on parents’ walking behavior, their perception of pedestrian safety, and their willingness to let their children walk to school. This study was a simulated walking environment experiment that created six different pedestrian conditions using sidewalks, landscape buffers, and street trees. We used within subjects design where participants were exposed to all six simulated conditions. Participants were 26 parents with elementary school children. Sidewalks, buffer strips, and street trees affected parents’ decisions to: walk themselves; let their children walk to school; evaluate their perception whether the simulated environment was safe for walking. We found that the design of pedestrian environments does affect people’s perceptions of pedestrian safety and their willingness to walk. The presence of a sidewalk, buffer strip, and street trees affected parents’ decision to walk, their willingness to let their children walk to school and perceived the pedestrian environment as safer for walking. The effects of trees on parents’ walking and perception of pedestrian safety are greater when there is a wide buffer rather than a narrow buffer. It was found that parents are more cautious about their children’s walking environments and safety than their own.
Highlights
This is especially important for children, as it has been shown that children who walk or bicycle to school tend to be more active than students who are driven or take the bus to school [14], have lower body mass index (BMI) scores [15], lower obesity levels [16], and are more likely to meet physical activity guidelines [17]
Since we had only six environmental conditions, full three-way and two-way interactions were not possible to test so instead we focused on the main effects of sidewalks, landscape buffers and trees in this result section
We found the design pedestrian environments children walk to school and perceived the environment as safer for walking
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Walking and biking to school is becoming increasingly rare This change may be linked to the documented increase in childhood obesity among children that has grown from. The age of a child may be a determining factor in whether a parent allows their child to bike or walk to school. A study found that parents of children aged 12–18 feel significantly more comfortable allowing their children to walk or bike to school than children younger than these ages [3]. Prior research explored the influences that individual, social, and physical environments have on walking and physical activity, but very few studies have focused primarily on parents’ perceptions of safety of pedestrian environments and the reasons why they are reluctant to allow their children to walk or bike to school.
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