Exploring Determinants of Pedestrians’ Satisfaction with Sidewalk Environments: Case Study in Korea

Abstract

This study intends to explore people’s satisfaction with sidewalk environments and to examine its association with emotional perceptions and physical components. A perception survey was taken to evaluate the emotional perceptions of 20 sidewalk environments with 105 participants. Two perception factors were identified as harmoniousness and openness through factor analysis. Then, a path model was tested to examine the relationship among satisfaction, identified perception factors, and physical components of sidewalk environments. The path model demonstrates a good fit with the data. Furthermore, the results show that overall satisfaction is more strongly directly affected by perception factors than by physical components. The indirect effects of physical components on overall satisfaction through emotional perceptions are much more than the direct effect. This study provides a useful method to connect emotional perceptions and physical components of and overall satisfaction with the sidewalk environments simultaneously. With refinements of the perception survey, the method can be a powerful tool to inform urban planners and designers of what should be priority aspects when designing the sidewalk environment.