Cognitive Mapping, Travel Behavior, and Access to Opportunity

Abstract

In this paper we combine theoretical and empirical research on cognitive mapping with our own initial research on the topic to suggest how cognitive mapping might be employed to help us better understand and predict travel behavior, emphasizing how spatial cognition shapes access to opportunity. We argue that the path-based, cumulative process of spatial learning, during which the cognitive map develops primarily through wayfinding and travel experience, affects accessibility by determining whether and how destinations are encoded into a person's cognitive map. Variations in cognitive mapping, spatial knowledge, and resultant travel behavior can vary between individuals or among groups in systematic ways. Some of these differences are related directly to previous travel experience, including experience with various travel modes. Such variations in spatial knowledge can result in different levels of functional accessibility, despite ostensibly similar locations, demographics, and other factors commonly thought to influence travel behavior. Our initial survey of residents in three Los Angeles neighborhoods suggests that cognitive mapping is indeed influenced by neighborhood and travel mode experience, in addition to demographic characteristics. Such modally constructed cognitive maps, which are likely to vary systematically by both location and socioeconomic status, may affect perceptions of activity opportunities in ways that travel behavior researchers are only beginning to understand. To a carless job seeker, job opportunities not easily reached by transit are effectively out of reach and even transparent. Modally constructed cognitive maps, in other words, are key to understanding both travel behavior and accessibility in cities.

When Transport Geography Meets Social Psychology: Toward a Conceptual Model of Travel Behaviour

“…These features are the focal points around which the individual constructs his or her mental map of the environment (Golledge and Zannaras, 1973). Research indicates that those internal models of the environment or mental maps influence our daily travel behaviour (e.g., Chorus and Timmermans, 2009;Dziekan, 2008;Mondschein et al, 2006;Arentze and Timmermans, 2005). As such, the spatial environment in our conceptual model resembles objective as well as subjective characteristics of the wider environment in which daily travel behaviour occurs.…”

An Interactive Mapping Tool to Assess Individual Mobility Patterns in Neighborhood Studies

“…Also, of relevant note, activity spaces reflect actual spatial behavior, as distinct, first from potential activity spaces (all places where an individual could have been given her/his space-time constraints) and second from mental maps (perceptual action space 50 ) which, as personal cognitive constructs, include both locations to which people go and other destinations where they do not go or never have been but of which they have mental representation. 45,51 Deriving indicators of environmental exposure: moving towards a contextual expology Recent work promotes improved measurement of neighborhood characteristics with randomeffect modeling of survey/audit data 52 or geographic information systems (a field to which we refer as to ecometrics). 53 While ecometrics is interested in the content of exposures, 4 there is a need to develop a contextual expology (definition in Table 1), as another subdiscipline interested in the spatio-temporal configuration of exposures, allowing researchers to define multi-place or activity space-bounded measures of exposure.…”

Is accessibility in the eye of the beholder? Social inequalities in spatial accessibility to health-related resources in Montréal, Canada

“…Few studies have assessed how resources located in self-defined neighbourhoods compared to those found in more traditional spatial units, and consequently, how individuals' spatial accessibility to neighbourhood resources might differ (Vallée et al, 2015) . Self-defined neighbourhoods can yet be seen as reflecting both past spatial behaviours and future possibilities: they capture an individual's effective past access as well as potential future access to neighbourhood resources (Campbell et al, 2009;Colabianchi et al, 2014;Mondschein et al, 2006). In line with this idea, it seems valuable to rely on self-defined neighbourhoods to integrate people's neighbourhood experiences within quantitative studies, and assess social inequalities in potential access (ie., accessibility) to health-related resources.…”