Preferences for Women Active Commuting on Built Environment? Differences between Urban-Rural Areas in Taiwan

Abstract

Active commuting is an effective way to integrate activities into people’s daily life to increase physical activity, and transportation plays a very important part in the promotion of physical activity, mainly carried out through three modes of walking, bicycle or taking public transportation. Compared with the needs of special ethnic groups such as women were often being ignored. Therefore, this study mainly constructs the evaluation indicators of the built environment for women’s active commuting in urban-rural areas. Through questionnaires 560 valid women’s questionnaires from July to September 2020 without working from home during covid-19 pandemic in Taiwan, “safety” is the primary indicator, and there are significant differences in the built environment of women’s active commuting between urban-rural areas. Finally, through PLS-SEM method, it was found that in terms of urban areas, women are most likely to take mass transit (67%), and built environment planning must consider density (unrelated to employment), diversity, distance to mass transit, and design. In terms of rural women, most of them use bicycles (60%). Built environment planning must consider density, diversity, accessibility, distance to public transportation, and design. The more comprehensive development strategy provides in planning and development of the built environment for women's active commuting.