Illuminating the Unseen in Neighborhood Travel: a Framework for Examining the Influence of Attitudes, Norms, and Perceptions on Travel Behavior

Travel behavior is a complex phenomenon that is affected not only by characteristics of the built environment, but also by economic, social, and psychological factors. Our research builds on recent work on the effects of land-use and attitudes on neighborhood-level travel behavior, and provides a more robust framework for assessing the influence of attitudes and perceptions on travel. We describe a transdisciplinary theoretical framework of travel behavior that incorporates attitudebehavior relationships, neighborhood perceptions, and fear of crime. To test the framework we conducted an extensive travel survey of 284 households in South Los Angeles. Questions were chosen to operationalize the constructs of our theoretical framework, focusing on attitudes toward different travel modes, the environment, social support, fear of crime, and control over personal travel behavior. Principal components analysis is used to reduce the multiple overlapping attitudinal questions into underlying factors, which are then used in regression models of transit use. The results indicate that the theoretical constructs hypothesized in our model do correspond with participants' responses to our questions on attitudes, norms, safety and neighborhood perceptions and that these factors are significant predictors of transit use.