Institute of Transportation, MOTC

       Transportation is an essential means for individuals to fulfill basic needs, explore urban opportunities, and build social connections. A greater diversity of daily trip purposes represents a higher level of satisfaction with various aspects of life. Nonetheless, due to different internal or external constraints, people with disabilities might never go out, seldom go out, or go out only for a certain purpose, and that in turn will result in a lower level of satisfaction with various aspects of life. Reviewing research regarding the characteristics of trips people with disabilities take, most of them focus on the characteristics of trips for a certain purpose of people with disabilities, very few of them explore the diversity of daily trip purposes of people with disabilities.

       In this context, I analyze data from the“2016 Disabled People’s Living Condition and Demand Survey”, conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Taiwan to identify sociodemographic, health status, and built environment factors associated with various daily trip purposes of people with disabilities. I build regression models for physically disabled individuals (including physical, visual, and hearing disabilities, with a sample size of 1,755 people) and mentally disabled individuals (including mental, autistic, and intellectual disabilities, with a sample size of 1,453 people). The binary logit model is first utilized to identify the factors influencing six trip purposes (household-serving, medical treatment, work, school, leisure, and sport) of people with disabilities. Then, six trip purposes are categorized into essential trips (household-serving, medical treatment, work, and school) and non-essential trips (leisure, and sport). And finally, the multinomial logit model is utilized to identify the factors that affect people with disabilities who have only essential trips, only non-essential trips, or both essential and non- essential trips.

        Results show that, given the same conditions of disability type, disability level, and health condition, sociodemographic and built environment factors still have a significant impact on the diversity of daily trip purposes of people with disabilities. For people with physical disabilities, those with lower household income, with a job, need to be accompanied or rely on pick-up and drop-off services, are more likely to have only essential trips; being elderly people or living in Kaohsiung and Pingtung region, are more likely to have both essential and non-essential trips. For people with mental or intellectual disabilities, those with lower household income, with a job,need to be accompanied, or rely on pick-up and drop-off services, are also more likely to have only essential trips; those with higher education, living in congregate housing or Kaohsiung and Pingtung region, are more likely to have both essential and non-essential trips. Policies like financial subsidies, living support services, transportation services, and housing location will effectively enhance the independent living, diversity of trip purposes, and social integration of people with disabilities.