The influence of built environment and travel attitudes on walking: A case study of Porto Alegre, Brazil

Abstract

Studies conducted in cities from developed countries reveal associations between travel behavior andbuilt environment. A priori we would expect that most of these associations hold for cities fromdeveloping countries but we do not have any basis to suppose whether or not they will be quantitativelythe same because of differences in the nature of urban form between cities of developed and developingcountries, and potential differences in attitudes and travel preferences from their travelers. This articleanalyzes the relationship between walking patterns, travel attitudes, and neighborhood’s urban structurein Porto Alegre, Brazil, under the assumption that built environment affects travel attitudes, instead of themore typical assumption that goes the other way around. We develop a two-step ordered choice modelenriched with attitudinal variables to integrate travel attitudes, built environment, and travel behavior. Amultiple indicator multiple cause (MIMIC) model is used to identify travel attitude as latent constructs thatfeed a frequency-of-walking ordered logit model with both the built environment and travel attitudes asexplanatory variables. Our results support the a priori assumption that we would replicate many of theresults already reported in the literature. However, we obtained the same differences in the magnitudes ofsome key elasticities. The results of the elasticities computed for the number of walking trips with respectto the built environment variables were smaller than in other studies. Only the effect of population densityon walking frequency seems to be marginally higher.