Urban mobility and cyclist`s environmental cognition¹

ABSTRACT

This is a qualitative research that aimed to analyze environmental cognitions among bicycle commuters in the city of Florianópolis, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Under perspectives of environmental psychology and people-environment studies, environmental cognitions refer to the human capacity to know, extract, and store information on the environment, producing knowledge that helps people a solve daily problems. This study was conducted in two steps, one of them exploratory and centered on the environment, and the other descriptive and centered on the person. In the last one, 18 commuters answered a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire, both oriented to identify the barriers and facilitators to bicycle commuting, their motivations and difficulties to ride their bicycles, as well as other aspects that draw attention in traffic. The results suggest that commuting by bicycle is a way to know the city and can mediate the construction of an image of the city by its experimentation.

Keywords:
Environmental psychology; urban environments; cognitive processes