Municipal Accessibility: A Multi-linear Regression Model with a Principal Component Analysis Approach

Accessibility is a crucial concept in the study of social inclusion, justice, equity and security as well as the reliability of supply in societies. Research has examined factors that objectively measure accessibility, such as land-use and socioeconomics. However, such approaches often fail to include individual perceptions of accessibility. Thus, this study proposes a multi-linear regression model that focuses on both objective and subjective factors to assess municipal accessibility. In addition, principal component analysis is applied to reduce dimensionality and eliminate the problem of multi-collinearity. The paper contributes a novel model with a higher prediction rate (70.5%) than that of a traditional multi-linear regression model (58%) during an evaluation of accessibility in the Swedish context.