The effect of urban spatial structure on citizen's attitude towards using private car in commuting a case of: the city of Babolsar

Growing urban spatial changes has led to increase in demand to more and longer movement، which resulted in longer vehicle mile traveled (VMT)، increasing in private car ratio in commutation، growing congestion and pollution. Rampant use of private car could be a reflection of increase in needs to travel which might be a result of disturbance in urban spatial structure (USS). The relationship between urban spatial structure and dependency to private car is investigated in some papers using objective indicators. This paper aimed to investigate the effect of urban spatial structure on people’s attitude towards using private car in case of access to job and urban public services. The research hypothesis is: USS has significant effect on attitude toward using private car. Using multilevel cluster sampling and Cochran model، 300 samples were surveyed by questionnaire in three main zones (inner، middle، outer zones) of the case city. At the first step، urban spatial structure was modeled based on population and retailed activities applying Relative Entropy Coefficient and Moran’s I Index. Parametric statistic methods (ANOVA and Covariance) were employed to analyze subjective data. The results show that USS has significant effect on people’s attitude toward using private car.