Impact of Subjective and Objective Factors on Subway Travel Behavior: Spatial Differentiation

Abstract

People’s perceptions and understanding of the built environment can shape and regulate travel intention and behavior. From the perspective of urban design, improving the built urban environment is an important way to encourage green travel. This study determined the impact path from the built environment to subway travel behavior, considering the intermediate effect of psychological factors. The impact path could provide feedback for optimizing the built environment, thereby improving the ratio of subway travel. In this study, the impact path hypothesis of “objective environment—subjective psychological—travel behavior” was first proposed, taking travelers’ psychological perceptions as the intermediary variable. Second, questionnaires and geographic information were used to measure the objective environment and subjective psychological perceptions. Third, a structural equation model was constructed to verify the proposed path hypothesis. Finally, multiscale geographically weighted regression was used to analyze the influence of subjective and objective factors on travel behavior and its spatial differences. The empirical case sampled 405 residents of Zhengzhou, China. The results verified the proposed impact path hypothesis and revealed spatial heterogeneity in its impact on travel behavior. The research explains how travel behavior is generated and could support the optimization of the urban built environment.