Children’s Incidental Social Interaction During Travel

Incidental social interactions such as seeing a known person while travelling to one’s destination is theorized to contribute to community connections and social capital. In such work, it is argued that walking, as opposed to other modes of transportation, maybe a critical factor. For children, these community connections may increase independent travel and contribute to their physical and subjective well-being. Previous research out of Japan found that walking was indeed more likely to result in incidental social interactions, but it is not clear whether that is a culturally anecdotal finding, or whether similar findings would occur in different cultural and transportation contexts. Reasons why it may be anecdotal include: in most cases, all elementary school children walk to school in Japan; many trips occur at a local level and are conducted by non-motorized modes in Japan; greet others (aisatsu) is a cultural value in Japan.This study examines whether mode relates to children aged 10-11 in Canada(177), Japan(178), and Sweden(144)having incidental social interaction during their trips.Further to previous research, it also asked the children what type of interaction occurred(spoke, waved, no interaction, or other). The findings demonstrate that the results are internationally applicable and that most incidental social interactions result in a verbal communication in all three countries.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD50 Standing Committee on Environmental Justice in Transportation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Waygood, E O D
  • Friman, Margareta
  • Olsson, Lars E
  • Taniguchi, Ayako
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 14p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: School children; Social factors; Travel; Voice communication; Walking
• Uncontrolled Terms: Social interaction
• Geographic Terms: Canada; Japan; Sweden
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Planning and Forecasting; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01623025
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-00321
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 24 2017 3:15PM