Determinants of Stated and Revealed Mental Map Quality: An Empirical Study

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an empirical study into the role of travel behaviour and socio-demographic factors as determinants of mental map quality. Several interesting findings are reported. In line with previous research, conducted in quite different urban contexts, the study finds that travelling by means of active modes, requiring active navigation of the traveller, leads to higher quality mental maps. Strong effects are found for both the car and bicycle modes (relative to the more passive bus-mode). Furthermore, there appears to be a rather strong correspondence between the stated (or: perceived) and revealed (or: actual) quality of people's mental maps. This correspondence is particularly strong among women and non-residents of the study area.

Acknowledgements

This paper has benefited a great deal from very helpful suggestions for improvement that were made by an anonymous referee. The authors wish to thank participants of the course ‘Research Skills’ at TU Eindhoven (2006/2007) for their help in designing the survey and collecting the data.

Notes

1. To facilitate a meaningful comparison in this study, it adopts the same definition of passive modes (modes that do not require the traveller to navigate his or her way through the city themselves) and active modes (modes that do require the traveller to navigate his or her way through the city themselves) that are used in Mondschein et al. (in press). As a referee rightfully notes, these definitions are different from the meaning usually assigned to the difference between active and passive travel modes (modes that do or do not require an individual to be physically active).

2. Given the availability of a number of excellent recent literature reviews concerning both the formation of people's cognitive constructions of urban space (e.g. Mark et al., 1999; Horning et al., 2008) as well as its relation with travel behavior (e.g. Golledge & Gärling, 2004; Weston & Handy, 2004; Mondschein et al., in press), and due to limitations of space, the paper refrains from presenting a separate in-depth literature review.

3. See the next section for a presentation and discussion of the data-collection effort and response group characteristics.

4. It should be noted that answers to this question do not necessarily relate to the stated quality of a person's cognitive construction of Eindhoven's urban space. This variable will be treated as an indirect measure in the remainder of this paper.

5. A large swimming pool, a large family hotel, a large shopping centre, a performing arts facility and a theatre.

6. The soccer stadium of PSV Eindhoven (B/1); the former headquarters of Philips electronics (C/3); two museum buildings (the Van Abbe-museum (A/5) and the Evoluon (D/4)); and a water tower (E/2).