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This dissertation, The Influence of Socio-economic and Land-use Variables on Personal Accessibility in the Urban Areas of Hong Kong by Cho-yam, Joseph, Lau, 劉祖蔭, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled The Influence of Socio-Economic and Land-Use Variables on Personal Accessibility in the Urban Areas of Hong Kong Submitted by Lau Cho Yam, Joseph For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in April, 2007 This study investigates variations of accessibility amongst individuals in Hong Kong and their coping travel behaviour in response to the constraints that are imposed by socio-economic and land-use variables. Based on the concept of the structuration theory, the author argues that conventional transport planning methods and transport policy formulation in Hong Kong, such as 'The Third Comprehensive Transport Study' and the transport policies that are spelt out in 'Hong Kong Moving Ahead', do not include individual road users, even though these transport plans and policies are the media for individual daily travel actions (Giddens, 1984). This omission leads to personal accessibility problems for different social groups and to the effects of air pollution on pedestrians. The author conducted a survey of seven urban districts, and the findings were used not only to measure the accessibility of opportunities for different social groups, but also to reflect the inadequacy of transport planning in Hong Kong. The survey followed the space-time activity approach to analyse individual travel behaviour and accessibility (Kwan, 1999). Telephone interviews were conducted to collect from the 2respondents their travel times and stay times for employment and non-work activities. Based on the travel data that was collected, isochronic measures and regression analysis were carried out to analyse the travel patterns of the respondents. The findings on the working respondents show that those respondents who live far away from a public transport network, are female, have a larger household size, have more social obligations, received a lower level of education and earn a low income tend to experience accessibility problems. To cope with socio-economic and land-use accessibility constraints, some working respondents tend to change to part-time jobs, adopt a one-worker household structure, reduce their household size by postponing marriage or childbearing, develop a wider social support network, find information on distant job opportunities and/or live in older neighbourhoods to reduce travel time and travel costs. Non-employed respondents who live in neighbourhoods with an adequate provision of recreation and sports facilities, are members of high-income households, participate in community association activities and are male tend to experience higher levels of access to opportunities. To cope with the accessibility constraints that are imposed by their socio-economic and land-use environments, the respondents tend to walk to opportunities that are located in their own districts, rather than take public transport modes to other districts, to save travel time and expense. Some respondents tend to live with elderly parents who can share their 3household maintenance responsibilities and, so, have more time intervals for social and recreation activities. The survey results indicate that the respondents had developed various types of coping travel behaviour to improve their personal accessibility and that the present conventional transport plans and policies h

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