Geografiske variasjoner i tilgang til aktivitets- og servicefunksjoner: Ekspertvurdert versus individvurdert stedskvalitet i Ski tettstedsområde

Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to map variations in expert assessments and subjective assessments of Quality-of-Place at a local level in Ski City, Norway. Previous studies on Quality-of-Place have identified an extensive list of factors that have an impact on Quality-of-Place. This study uses the same factors in order to identify community resources that have an impact on Quality-of-Place in Ski City. The same set of identified community resources are used to operationalize Quality-of-Place in the expert assessment as well as in the subjective assessment although the operationalization is carried out differently in the two approaches. The subjective assessment makes use of a questionnaire to collect individual preferences of Quality-of-Place in Ski city. In this approach Quality-of-Place is operationalized as the level of satisfaction with the travel route to the selected community recourses. The expert assessment makes use of network analysis in a GIS environment. In this approach Quality-of-Place is operationalized as the travel distance (meters) to the selected community recourses.

The secondary objective of this thesis is to explore the relationship between expert assessment and individual assessment of Quality-of-Place in Ski City. This relationship is explored with the use of a Spearman`s rank order correlation coefficient. In general, the results shows that geographical distance does not always explain the total satisfaction with the travel route to the selected community recourses. Hence, there is an uncertainty to use travel distance as an explanatory factor for individual preferences of Quality-of-Place.