The built environment impacts on route choice from home to school for rural students: A stated preference experiment

INTRODUCTION: Rural roads and built environment in China have been developed enormously, but it is not clear whether these roads fulfill the needs of school children as they need to travel long to school every day. OBJECTIVE: It is crucial to understand the influencing factors of their travel mode choices to better design future country roads and built environment, aiming to promote physical activities of school children in a safe built environment. METHOD: This study thus attempts to explore the impacts of rural built environment attributes on children's school travel mode preferences. Eight rural built environment attributes are considered: distance from home to school; the number of intersections passed on the way to school; whether there are sidewalks/bicycle lanes; the traffic speed of school access routes; whether there are separation facilities between motor vehicles and non-motor vehicles; whether there are traffic lights and zebra crossings; availability of greenery such as lawns, flower ponds and street trees and whether there are shops on the way to school and at the school gate. Six hundred and thirty eight valid questionnaires were obtained through face-to-face interviews with school-age children in villages. A multinomial logit model was estimated to unravel the preferences and choices of rural school-age children in different models of school travel using the stated choice data. RESULTS: All the eight attributes have significant impacts on rural children's school travel choices on foot, bicycle, electric bicycle or motorbike. And four rural road design attributes have significant effects on rural children's school travel by private cars. A travel path with pavements or bike lanes, few intersections, low traffic speeds, greenery and shops can facilitate children's school travels on foot or by bike. The conclusions can provide reference for the further upgrading planning, designing and construction of rural roads, as well as enriching the theory and practice of child-friendly villages construction.