Investigation of the Determinants of Travelers’ Mental Knowledge of Public Parking Facilities

This paper describes a study of car drivers’ familiarity with the parking situation in the vicinity of a regional shopping center. The data used for this study are collected in Hasselt, a medium sized city in Belgium. The central shopping area of Hasselt is surrounded by 23 public parking facilities. 1007 residents have been asked to indicate if they are familiar with each parking facility. The concept of familiarity was related to the socio-demographic and cognitive attributes of the respondents, their trips to the city center and the type of parking facility using multinomial logistic regression and bivariate probit regression. The results show that familiarity with parking facilities is especially related to age and education, and to the frequency of car use towards the city centre, and to a lesser extent to place of residence, income and perceived mental knowledge. In addition to these results, this paper demonstrates the value of collecting virtual buffer data by means of an online survey tool. The authors recommend that simulation models that predict parking choice behavior take into account the different levels of familiarity with parking facilities, and the contributing factors. An important avenue for further research is the combination of personal and facility specific information to assess the familiarity with different types of parking facilities.