Impact of urban built environment on residential choice of commuting mode in Shanghai

With the rapid urbanization and motorization in China, the increasing car ownership promotes the dependence on automobile commuting, and hinders sustainable development and leads to serious traffic congestion and environment pollution as well. Based on the questionnaire survey from the residents in the central city of Shanghai, a multinomial logit model was applied to explore the impact of built environment on residents' commuting mode. It is concluded that the urban built environment has a significant effect on the choice of motorized commuting. Specifically, after limiting other factors, improving population density, mixed land use and the proportion of crossroads in residential areas may help refrain the choice of automobile commuting, while urban built environment of employment areas has less impact on residential choice commuting mode. Besides, the built environment has different impacts on commuting mode choice due to heterogeneity of individual socio-economic characteristics. The policy implication of the research results is that commuting mode could be optimized by improving land use planning and transit environment designing.