Author(s)

Weite Lu, Upali Vandebona, Masaru Kiyota, Haiqiang Liu

Corresponding Author

Weite Lu

Abstract

This study is designed to investigate the potential to apply persuasive concepts available from social cognitive theory to improve the compliance of parking rules by the general public. A physical trial has been conducted at a university campus in Japan, where the permit parking signage system catering to individuals with disabilities was systematically modified during an eight-month period of reversal design experiment. The relationships between illegal parking ratios and conditions setting are analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicate that the level of violations reduced to the lowest value with addition of the supplementary signage and a picture-message. At certain sites, the allocated disabled parking spaces were observed with a rate illegal use of 5% or less when there were ground marking, signage and a picture-message. Observations have also indicated that the level of violations in the afternoons is higher than in the mornings. This type of information could be useful in the design of patrol for parking management. Our study can help local government officials decide how to provide effective signage strategy to reduce misuse of disabled parking and provide data to other countries that are considering using this strategy.

Keywords

Disabled parking; Illegal parking ratios; Picture-message; Reversal design experiment; Signage strategies