Factors Influencing Urban Residents Travel in Minna Metropolis, Nigeria

Abstract

The need for people to interact is ordered by the spatial spread of activities within the special environment. The spatial separation of cities and land use types necessitate spatial interface for purposeful interrelationship. Several factors influence the interaction demand of households in different cities. This study was conducted to explore the significant factors which serve as determinants of travel among households in Minna, Nigeria. Data were collected through the administration of 1,299 questionnaires to randomly selected households of which 888 questionnaires were returned valid. A multistage sampling technique was adopted in which Minna was divided into four cluster zones, from which 12 diverse residential neighbourhoods were selected. Descriptive analysis was used to determine the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents while factors analysis was used to account for the variation in factors influencing urban travel in the study area. Findings shows that majority of the respondents were male with 63.9% compare to Female with 36.1, the dominant Household size is between 5-8 which is 54.4% while, middle income group households with 49.1% were pronounced. Also, respondents with less than 30 years old were more dominant with 42.7%. The result of the factor analysis shows that 8 factors whose eigenvalue are greater than 1, significantly influences urban residents interaction. These include; Phone call, cost of call, income, marital status, position in household, gender, car ownership, and number of licence driver. These accounted for 59.4% of the total variance. The study recommends that government and other policy makers should take into account socio-economic characteristics of urban residents in the design, construction, planning of roads and provision of public transportation policies. Residents are advised to make use of various opportunities available on Telecommunication platforms in the form of virtual and telecommuting to substitute physical interactions due to covid-19 pandemic.