Built Environment Impacts on Rural Residents’ Daily Travel Satisfaction

Abstract

The rapid urbanization in China urges scholars to investigate the impacts of built environment on the level of travel satisfaction of rural residents to improve their quality of life and make planning exercises more human-centric. This study samples six villages out of the 25 top rural areas in Chengdu, Sichuan, China, as the research object and constructs a structural equation model to explore the direct and indirect impacts of the built environment on daily travel satisfaction of rural residents. The research finds that building density (0.609), road density (0.569), the number of accessible markets (0.314), and private car ownership (0.02) have significant positive impacts on travel satisfaction. Public transport (−0.063) has a direct negative impact on travel satisfaction. Consequently, in order to further improve travel satisfaction, construction departments and rural planners should improve the building and road densities of new rural areas and increase the number of accessible markets. The convenience of rural public transport services also needs improvement.