Experimental analysis of walkability evaluation using virtual reality application

Excessive motorisation, resulting from the vicious cycle of car-oriented road development and car-reliant land development, significantly deteriorates walking environments, causing traffic safety problems, damaging city-centre vitality, and hindering sustainable mobility. Many Asian cities face these issues, and as a result, it is often difficult for their street users to experience higher level walking needs, such as comfort and attractiveness, in their daily walking environments. Without such experiences, street users may have difficulty in finding high quality street environments. Visualisation technologies allowing street users to virtually experience more diverse walking needs may assist them in recognising new visions of walkable cities. Accordingly, this study conducts an experimental analysis of walkability evaluations by applying virtual reality tools for evaluating various streets to answer the following research questions: (1) How are street environments related to walking perceptions and behaviours? (2) Is virtual reality visualisation advantageous for revealing these relationships? The research conducted an experiment on virtual reality walkability evaluation that examined perception-based evaluations of street environments in car-reliant large cities of Japan, Thailand, and Australia. The evaluation mechanism of walkability was analysed based on walking needs, taking into account the impact of the virtual reality tools. The results demonstrate that virtual reality evaluation of internationally diverse street environments reflects the sensitivity of walking willingness to the satisfaction of hierarchical walking needs. Further, the impact of virtual reality use was observed in the greater engagement with virtual environments, which is related to higher walking willingness. The results have major implications for planning and design practices, suggesting the potential of virtual reality-based evaluation systems as useful tools for creating and implementing new visions of walkable cities.