Analysis of the impact of built environment on taxi travel demand considering spatial spillover effect

Urban built environment has an important impact on travel. In order to explore the influence of built environment on the taxi travel demand in the period of rapid urbanization in China, an econometric model considering spatial spillover effect is proposed. Beijing is taken as the empirical case in this paper. On the base of traffic analysis zone, taxi GPS data is used to obtain the taxi travel demand, and the densities of residential, employment and traffic facilities are measured to represent the built environment. Comparison among traditional OLS model, SAR model and SDM model, it is found that the SDM model obtains the best model fit and explanatory power. The significant spatial spillover effect of built environment on taxi travel demand should not be removed. According to the SDM model results, the direct, spillover and total effects of built environment on taxi travel demand are analyzed. This study hope to better understand the effect of built environment on taxi travel demand, providing helpful basis to reduce the rate of taxi without passengers, achieve the taxi space demand forecasting and distribution equilibrium.