Transport Preferences of City Residents in the Context of Urban Mobility and Sustainable Development

Abstract

The article focuses on the transport preferences of the inhabitants of a medium-sized city in the context of changing urban mobility and sustainable development. It fills the gap in the literature researching the changing communication behavior of the inhabitants of a given city. The main purpose of this article is to identify and analyze the preferred means of movement for inhabitants of a medium-sized city in Central and Eastern Europe. The research area was the city of Szczecin, Poland. The research was carried out using the following research methods: literature review, analysis of legal acts and documents, case study. The research material was collected using an anonymous questionnaire based on a proprietary survey made available to the inhabitants of the largest city of north-western Poland, Szczecin, in the GOOGLE browser in the period 17 May 2019–1 April 2021. The multiple-response contingency tables, chi-square test of independence and non-parametric U Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis tests were used for study development. The conducted scientific research showed that, when determining the relationship between the method and the destination, the respondents most often chose a car or on-foot commuting in all of the surveyed destinations. The research results increase the level of knowledge regarding residents’ needs in terms of urban mobility and the development of Szczecin’s transport system. They can be used in the rational actions of local authorities aiming to improve residents’ the quality of life in the context of the sustainable development of city transport.