Investigation of the determinants of the mental knowledge of public parking facilities

This paper presents a study regarding the determinants of travellers’ mental knowledge of public parking facilities. The data regarding the mental knowledge were collected in the city of Hasselt, Belgium, by means of an internet-based questionnaire. In total 1007 respondents completed the questionnaire. Two different dependent variables were specified: the mental representation of parking facilities (known or not) and the identification of parking facilities (identified first or not). In addition, three different groups of determinants were included in the models: parking attributes, personal characteristics, and mental knowledge of the city. The data are analyzed using generalized estimating equations (GEE) models for binary data. The analyses show a considerable influence of the following parking attributes: type of parking facility, Park & Ride status, charged parking, number of places, and location of parking facility. Furthermore our study revealed that personal characteristics and mental knowledge of the city play a marginal role.