Analyses of People's Perceptions on Sidewalk Environments Combining Factor Analysis and Rough Sets Approach

This study investigates the relationship between people’s perceptions of sidewalk environments and their component elements. Participants are asked to judge the selected twenty sidewalk photographs with the rating scales through a psychological survey. Two perception factors including harmoniousness and openness are specified through semantic differential technique by using factor analysis. In the meantime the physical components of sidewalk environments are surveyed in the field survey. Then the rough sets approach is applied to link people’s perception factors and physical components of sidewalk environment. The application of the rough sets approach outputs the most important attributes to people’s perceptions, minimal attribute sets without redundancy, and a series of decision rules that represent the relationships between perceptions and physical components of sidewalk environments. The analytical approach helps to better understand people’s perceptions to sidewalk environments in a small city and then establish a useful and constructive ground of discussion for walking environment design and management.