Milad Mehdizadeh - MSc Graduate in Transportation Planning, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Amir Reza Mamdoohi - Assistant Professor at TarbiatModares University, Tehran, Iran
Mohsen Fallah Zavareh - Assistant Professor at Kharazmi University, Karaj, Iran
Trond Nordfjaern - Senior Research Scientist, NTNU Samfunnsforskning, Norway

Walking to school has been dramatically decreasing since four decades ago,worldwide. There is very little support yet on the validity of psychologicaltheories behind choosing mode of travel to schools by parents for their children,particularly in developing countries. The present study aims to investigate theeffect of parental attitudes towards walking on choosing walking (versus nonwalkingmodes) to schools for the children of primary schools in Rasht. 1078Questionnaires were distributed among students in nine elementary schools(including public and private boys and girls schools) in January 2014 (ReturnRate: 80%). The questionnaire included instruments on parental attitudes towardwalking, as well as instruments to collect a few socioeconomic and builtenvironment attributes. The respondents were also asked to reveal the dominanttravel modes by which their children had commuted to schools during the weekbefore the survey. K-means cluster analysis, Principal Component Analysis(PCA) and Multivariate Analysis of Covariates (MANCOVA) showed that thedifferences between 'Comfort and convenience of walking' and 'Contextual anddesign preconditions for walking' as two principal components of parentalattitudes towards walking are statistically significant between those parentsallowing their children to walk to schools compared to those their childrencommuting to schools by non-walking means of travel. The research givespromising findings for making pragmatic policies, planning for activities andundertaking campaigns with the aim of promoting walking to schools.

Attitudes towards walking, Comfort and convenience, Design feasibility, Contextual and design preconditions, walking to school