Toward Facilitating Going Out:on the Relationship Between Residents’ Outing Behavior and Cognitive Distance in Suburbs

It is known that there are various factors that influence people’s intention to go out. In this study, the effects of each of these factors on the going-out behavior of residents in urban and suburban areas by the range of going out were analyzed and compared. This study focuses on Saitama City. Saitama City is a suburb in the Tokyo Metropolitan area and the convenience of going out varies greatly within the region. Data of 1,000 respondents to a web-based questionnaire survey are prepared on a variety of factors thought to explain going-out behavior, such as basic attributes, impressions of public transportation, cognitive distance and preferences. And then a random forest classifier was trained by using collected data. As a result, the study revealed two key findings on the relationship between various factors and intention to go out. Firstly, cognitive distance significantly influences the intention to go out, confirming prior studies. Secondly, two main patterns of going-out behavior emerge: general intention to go out and intention for leisure activities, versus intention to go outside the city or district. Increase of age influences the former pattern, while preferences for longer outings directly impact the latter. This detailed breakdown offers practical insights for local governments to enhance residents’ intention to go out.