Analysis of the Effects of Walking Environment Components on Pedestrian Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction

Unsatisfactory urban walking environment stresses urban residents, and may cause mental illness and chronic diseases by reducing walking activities. Therefore, establishing a high-quality walking environment that can promote walking activities in urban residents has emerged as an important issue. The walking environment consists of various components, such as trees, stairs, streetlights, benches, signs, fences, and facilities, and it is essential to understand which components and their settings act as satisfiers or dissatisfiers for pedestrians, to create a better quality walking environment. Therefore, this study investigated pedestrian satisfaction and dissatisfaction as a function of various environmental components through a survey using walking environment images. The results revealed that most of the walking environment components except the braille block and treezone exhibited significant correlations with pedestrian satisfaction. Particularly, safety-related component (e.g., adjacent roads, parked cars, traffic cushions, and car separation), and landscape-related components (e.g., trees and green), as well as the material settings of landscape facilities (e.g., wooden fences, benches, stairs, and walkway surfaces) correlated with pedestrian satisfaction. The results of this study can contribute to the extraction of useful features to evaluate pedestrian satisfaction as a function of the walking environment. The research outcome is expected to assist in the effective arrangement of walking environment components and their settings, which will ultimately contribute to significantly satisfactory walking environment and encourage walking activities.