Population Density or Populations Size. Which Factor Determines Urban Traffic Congestion?

Yu Sang Chang, Sung Jun Jo, Yoo-Taek Lee and Yoonji Lee
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Yu Sang Chang: Department of Business, Gachon University, Seongnam 13120, Korea
Sung Jun Jo: Department of Business, Gachon University, Seongnam 13120, Korea
Yoo-Taek Lee: Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon 34000, Korea
Yoonji Lee: Department of Korean Literature & Literature, Gachon University, Seongnam 13120, Korea

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-21

Abstract: A large number of articles have documented that as population density of cities increases, car use declines and public transit use rises. These articles had a significant impact of promoting high-density compact urban development to mitigate traffic congestion. Another approach followed by other researchers used the urban scaling model to indicate that traffic congestion increases as population size of cities increases, thus generating a possible contradictory result. Therefore, this study examines the role of both density and population size on traffic congestion in 164 global cities by the use of Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology model. We divide 164 cities into the two subgroups of 66 low density cities and 98 high density cities for analysis. The findings from the subgroups analysis indicated a clear-cut difference on the critical role of density in low-density cities and the exclusive role of population size in high-density cities. Furthermore, using threshold regression model, 164 cities are divided into the two regions of large and small population cities to determine population scale advantage of traffic congestion. Our findings highlight the importance of including analysis of subgroups based on density and/or population size in future studies of traffic congestion.

Keywords: traffic congestion; population density; population size; income per capita; urban scaling model; STIRPAT model; threshold regression model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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