COGNITIVE DISTANCE IN NAGOYA CITY

Abstract

One of difficulties to evaluate previous researches on cognitive distance is due to a number of methodological differences which preclude the direct comparison of results: the kind of distance requested to estimate, the method of distance estimation, and the character of subjects varied from study to study. The aim of this paper is therefore to clarify the essential pro-perties of cognitive distance within a city, which can be found beyond the methodological differences. For that aim the author tried to analyze the cognitive distances in Nagoya city from as different viewpoints as possible.
The design of the investigation is following: (1) The origins of distance estimation were three senior high schools in Nagoya city, and the subjects were both the residents near each school and the students attending the each school. So the subjects can be separated into six groups (Fig. l and Table 1). (2) The destinations for distance estimation were twelve transporta-tional nodes, which were perceived well by the subjects and were distributed throughout Nagoya city (Table 2). (3) The subjects were asked to estimate both ‘crow-flight’ distance and time distance. The estimation of ‘crow-flight’ distance was obtained by the method of ratio estimation (Briggs, 1973; Lowrey, 1973), while time distance was estimated in terms of the method of magnitude estimation (See Appendix).
The results are summarized as follows:
1. Both the linear and power functions are fitted to the data well across all subject groups (Tables 3, and 4). This indicates that a high correlation exsists between objective distance and cognitive distance independent of distances used to estimate.
2. In most of results, parameter b in power function has been observed to be less than one. This indicates that the cognitive distance increases at a decreasing rate relative to objective distance (MacEachren, 1980). It was, however, supported only in the ‘crow-flight’ distance estimation in this study.
3. The nearer to the city center the origins are located, the more highly the cognitive 'crow-flight' distances are correlated with the objective 'crow-flight' distances. In the time distance estimation, the correlation coefficients were independent of the location of origin.
4. The 'crow-flight' distance estimation was affected by route distance (Table 6). This ex-plains that 'crow-flight' distance was over-estimated on the whole as route distance is neces-sarily longer than 'crow-flight' distance.
5. Time distance was estimated more correctly than 'crow-flight' distance (Figs. 2 and 3) and the 'crow-flight' distance estimation was affected by time distance (Table 6). It is sug-gested from the above findings that people cognize the distance within a city by means of time distance.
6. The subjects underestimated distances towards the city center compared with distances away from the downtown. This correspnods to the finding by Lee (1970). This tendency was remarkable in the 'crow-flight' distance estimation (Table 7).
7. There is no significant difference between the citizen group and the student group located at the same origin. And there also appeared to be no relation between the distance estimation and the other subject-centered factors such as age, sex, length of residence, driving status and travel mode.
It was thus clarified that stimulus-centered factors (Briggs, 1976) had greater influences on cognitive distance rather than subject-centered factors. Stimulus-centered factors are closely related with the urban structure in Nagoya city which has only one dominant city center and the radial railway pattern.