Exploring the role of built environment in shaping travel outcome with relation to shopping behaviour

Abstract

Recent researches have revealed that, in addition to travel behavior, people's lifestyles, attitudes, and behavior all play an essential role besides alternative attribute factors and socio-economic factors. The mindsets, behaviors, and lifestyles of the people are the main influencers on shopping trips. Additionally, research have demonstrated that an individual's travel behavior is influenced by their activity preferences and the location of their journey. [Boussauw, Lauwers, and Ronse, 2015]. Communications technology has drastically changed how people purchase in recent years. Consumers today have a variety of options for purchasing items from local or international marketplaces as well as for shipping these things to their homes, whether they are acquired from physical stores or online sellers. More and more consumer goods and household items are now being delivered to houses instead of being picked up at physical stores. This transition has had a significant impact on people's shopping behavior as well as the growth of online shopping as a retail channel. Studies from all across the world have discovered that shopping online has the potential to change the nature and patterns of shopping visits, to replace them, to complement them, to expand them, or to have no impact at all (i.e. no effect). These effects varies with type of product purchased, geographical location, surroundings and culture of the shopper. Thus, there is a need to know more about shopping preference for daily need items and built-environment characteristics of the neighborhood. We can find evidence for substitution effect in various studies. In my thesis, I carried out a preliminary research study in four different neighborhoods in the national capital city, Delhi. The aim of my thesis was to study the effects of built-environment characteristics of the area upon individual’s shopping behavior for daily need items at neighborhood level. My two main research questions were: 1. How is shopping preference of individuals related to objective factors (personal, household and built-environment characteristics) for daily need items at neighborhood level? 2. How do subjective factors influence shopping preference for daily need items at neighborhood level? Shopping preference is not always physical or online. It can also be both (hybrid mode). Here we are excluding hybrid shoppers. There is wide range of daily need items available online and offline, but this study only focuses upon grocery, vegetables and perishable items (meat and fish). This study addresses the individuals aged above twenty five years in order to exclude children and young adolescents, who are often found to be treated as a separate group of interest in shopping preference research. The factors that are associated with or that influence shopping preference can be broadly classified into objective factors and subjective factors. Objective factors are directly measurable while subjective factors need to be measured through indirect methods. Socio-economic and demographic characteristics, travel characteristics, built-environment characteristics, etc., can be measured directly, and so they are treated as objective factors. However people’s perception related questions can only be measured indirectly, and so they are treated as subjective factors. This broad classification of factors as objective and subjective has been considered while carrying out this study. Four neighborhoods in Delhi were selected for case study. Each neighborhood comprises of different land use. The neighborhoods were selected from the Zonal Development Plan 2021 of Zone F, Delhi. Another criterion applied was the builtform and road network distribution within the neighborhoods. All the four neighborhoods are well connected via metro. R K Puram is located in North-west of Zone F, near Vasant Vihar. It is comparatively low density area. Malviya Nagar is located near to Saket, one of the three main district centers of Zone F. It is comparatively congested area developed for accommodation of displaced people under Urban Renewal Scheme. Ber Sarai is located near to IIT Delhi. It is categorized as Urban Village with permissibility of mixed use. South Extension II comprises of posh residential societies along with