Residents’ Perceptions of Walkability Attributes in Cold Region Chinese Cities: Reliability and Validity

In the last two decades, Chinese cities experienced a rapid development stage. In recent years, urban environmental quality and urban vitality have attracted more and more scholars attention. In 1st tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, there are many studies on the relationship between urban environment and travel behavior, especially walking. However, these studies pay more attention to macro scale rather than micro scale, in addition, as the influence of urban development and urban environment on walkability are varies by the difference of climate, economy and culture ,the results of currently research are not applicable to all cities. Because of the relatively slow pace of urban development and the relatively backward economic development, there are few studies on the walkability of the urban environment in the cold region cities in northern China. As affection of the extreme cold climate, a high walkability urban environment is needed to encourage residents’ physical activity, especially in winter. At the same time, the research results of relationship between micro scale urban environment and walkability can be more practically help improve the urban environment from the perspective of investment, in particular for the urban areas which are already been built and hard to make big scale regeneration. To test the influence of urban built environment on walkability in cold region Chinese cities, this study developed a questionnaire to perceive the residents’ perception of walkability around their neighborhood, which was based on the Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale for Mainland China (NEWS-MC). The original Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale(NEWS) are developed for use in USA to measure residents’ perceptions of the environment attributes, and has been applied in many countries, such as US, Australia, Korea and Hong Kong, and be modifily to be Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale for Mainland China(NEWS-MC) and been applied in Chinese cities. NEWS-MC has been found have moderate to high rest-retest reliabilities and good criterion The evidence illustrated high-walkable neighborhoods be found with higher density , land-use mix, street connectivity, more safety and have more aesthetics elements. In this study, we modified NEWS-MC to reflect the characteristics of cold region Chinese built environment and people’s behavior mode. To perceive the final version of Neighborhood Environment Walkability Scale for cold region Chinese cities (NEWS-CRC), We made a pilot study which include 50 samples, then interview 800 residents from 6 selected residential districts in Harbin (the capital city with highest latitude in China) which were different in walkability attributes and economic status. The final version of the NEWS-CRC included 8 subscales and 3 single items (76 items in total). Test-retest reliability showed moderate to high except 4 items . In total, the NEWS-CRC could illustrate residents’ perceptions of walkability attributes in cold region Chinese cities and could be use in other Chinese urban attributes studies related to walking.