Benefits and Pitfalls of Emotional and Mobility Meb Mapping. A Case Study of Two Czech Cities

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to describe the advantages and weaknesses of participatory mapping and to compare them with a questionnaire survey. This case study focuses on two medium-sized cities and their surrounding municipalities, Ostrava (OV) and Hradec Kralove (HK), both located in the Czech Republic. The study works with a questionnaire survey from the research agency STEM/MARK (n=536, PAPI method 86%, CAWI method 14%) from 2022. The main objective of this research was to find out the mobility goals of seniors. Overall, respondents reported 479 goals, with respondents identifying 23 types of important goals in HK and 24 types in OV, with shopping (37 and 24% respectively), doctor (19 and 22%), family (10 and 13%), walking (8 and 6%) and friends (5 and 4%) identified as top priorities. Maximum clustering was assessed at a distance of 370 m for web mapping targets (p<0.05). Survey targets reached maximum clustering at a distance of 140 m in HK and 200 m in OV (p<0.05). The results of web mobility mapping show that natural places and parks are the most common attractive places for respondents. On the other hand, in OV, locations with noisy people or homeless people, as well as industry and brownfields, are identified as repulsive places. In HK, roads, traffic and some public buildings are perceived as the main repulsive places. The perception of railway stations is ambiguous. This study contributes to the discussion on the validity of participatory mapping, showing the importance of careful survey design and data preprocessing. The results from the web mapping were compared with the results from the questionnaire survey (PAPI method) to better describe the advantages and weaknesses of web mapping.