Cognitive Mapping, Travel Behavior, and Access to Opportunity

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 socio-economic 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.