Determinants of urban wayfinding styles

Abstract

Everyday people find their way towards work, supermarkets, or unfamiliar places are explored for a social visit. Understanding how differences in urban wayfinding behaviour relate to daily travel patterns is important to describe route choice behaviour, identify potential navigation problems, design more legible cities, and provide comprehensible travel information. Therefore, the goal of this study is to jointly investigate the differences between urban wayfinding styles and the relations with socio-demographic, motility, urban environment, navigational preferences, and daily travel behaviour. The findings of this study are based on a sample of the Dutch population of 1101 respondents. All respondents completed a three-day travel diary as part of the Mobility Panel Netherlands (MPN), and an additional cross-sectional survey designed to capture perceptions, attitudes, and wayfinding for active modes (PAW-AM). A Factor Analysis is conducted to identify urban wayfinding styles based on a Dutch version of the self-report questionnaire of environmental spatial skills originally developed in Santa Barbara (SBSOD). Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) are used to estimate to what extent various determinants affect two hypothesized urban wayfinding styles, in this study coined as Orientation Ability (OA) and Knowledge Gathering & Processing Ability (KA). The main findings of the study are an associated effect of gender and age on both urban wayfinding styles, while the navigational preference to follow the bearing line and average daily distance travelled by car have disassociated effects. The remaining determinants are only significant in either OA or KA, providing evidence that mainly different processes describe each wayfinding style.