Walking Accessibility to the Bus Stop: Does It Affect Residential Rents? The Case of Jinan, China

Abstract

It is a crucial question to understand the relationship between public transit and residential rents for the proposal of a sustainable transportation system and efficient allocation of lands during the policy marking process. Little has been discovered in the current literature regarding the impact of the bus system on residential rents. This study investigated walking accessibility to the bus stop based on the average daily on-ridership data of bus stops and street networks in Jinan, China, and analysed the impact on the spatial differentiation of residential rents using the spatial autocorrelation analysis and the geographically weighted regression (GWR) method. Our results suggested that residential rent levels in Jinan had evident spatial dependence and spatial differentiation characteristics, which was signified by a significant high rent, and a high accessibility distribution pattern surrounding both city and sub-city centres. GWR results further showed that walking accessibility to the bus stop could significantly improve residential rents. On the spatial scale, a 1% increase in walking accessibility could result in a premium of up to 0.427% and a 2.984% decline in rental prices. Lastly, we found that walking accessibility to the bus stop significantly affected housing rents incrementally with increasing distance between residences and the city centre. Moreover, walking accessibility to the bus stop showed a marginal ‘first increase and then decrease’ effect on residential rents as the distance to the bus stop increased. The premium effect was the most significant among residences within 500–900 m of a bus stop.