| Summary: | 碩士 === 銘傳大學 === 都市規劃與防災學系碩士班 === 104 === The neighborhood environment in urban areas is a very important factor in a child’s development stage and children’s activities relate to their physical and psychological development. However, with the process of urbanization, traffic and law and order issues have emerged and the neighborhood relations have become increasingly alienated, to such extent that parents are not willing their children to go out alone and choose, instead, to accompany them out or use their cars to shuttle them between home and school. It has reached such a proportion that the ratio of children going out alone has been drastically reduced. Therefore, understanding the independent mobility of children in the neighborhood and the factors influencing such mobility are an important topic for research.
Thus, this research study takes Taoyuan District in Taoyuan City as a case to investigate children living under different features of the neighborhood environment in urban areas and the differences in independent mobility within the neighborhood. It will also investigate what factors and to what extent the different characteristics of the neighborhood environment influence children’s independent mobility. In this survey, The Nanmen Elementary School, situated in Taoyuan, is used for empirical research. Survey questionnaires were distributed at random in a view to study the substantive environmental quality of the school district. A total of 523 questionnaires were recovered and the results showed the real prevailing environment to the researchers. The urban area is divided according to the specificities of the neighborhood’s environment into three main sections, which include the area in front of the Taoyuan Railway Station, where the city government has planned better public facilities around the sidewalks, in the residential district; the areas surrounding the train station, which are mainly for commercial use, as a business central district; and the area behind the station, which is outlined for residential use, but where sidewalks and public facilities are relatively rudimentary. By making use of the multiple regression analysis, to evaluate children’s independent mobility in these three sections, results showed that children living in the residential areas in front of the station, which have better planned public facilities, have the highest independent mobility whereas children from the central business district were credited with the lowest rate. Extrapolating from the same results, it can be predicted that the same children from the same residential areas will still override those from the central business district with a higher independent mobility because of favorable public safety and safer traffic environment in their respective areas.
In addition, the child’s age and the family income, the number of cars owned by the family, the number of adults and children in the family, and children and family factors will have an impact on the independent mobility of children. While a child’s age affects positively his independent mobility, other factors, however, affect it negatively. The perceptual aspects of the environment by children’s parents, the perception of children’s movement safety in the neighborhood impacts positively on his independent mobility, while the perception of harassment concerns, anxiety, activities venues providing bad perception and other factors will produce the opposite impact. The study showed that, in addition to personal factors of the children and the situation of their respective families, the parents' perception of the environmental factors will have an impact on their children's independent mobility.
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