Sponsor
This project was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC; grant number 1302), a U.S. DOT University Transportation Center
Document Type
Report
Publication Date
6-1-2023
Abstract
Nearly 4.6 million immigrants aged 65 and older live in the United States. This population is expected to more than triple in size by 2050. A lack of culturally appropriate transportation solutions for older immigrants creates disparities in access to services for older immigrant populations, increasing their risk of social isolation and reduced physical and mental health. A growing number of older immigrants live in low-density urban environments, which are characterized by high automobile dependency and limited public transportation. In these environments, older immigrants are likely to depend on others to provide private transportation. Negative aspects of this reliance on others are that the private transportation providers may be at risk for caregiver burden and stress, and older immigrants may lack transportation to social or health opportunities if their ride providers are unavailable.
This survey research examines the mobility; activity spaces; transportation patterns, resources, and needs; transportation-related support networks; and health and well-being among older Vietnamese adults in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. It also investigates the provision of rides from private transportation providers and the impact of providing rides to an older Vietnamese adult in an urban area. It uses geographic information systems (GIS) to construct regular activity spaces for the older adults and their ride providers, and ride-provision activity spaces for the ride providers. Using the ride providers' activity spaces, it proposes three indicators of geospatial burden for providing rides.
Findings indicate that the older adults and their ride providers rely on automobiles for transportation. Most of the older adults receive rides for transportation and their ride providers are also Vietnamese and primarily speak Vietnamese. The GIS analyses suggest that constructing activity spaces with self-reports of regular and ride-provision routine activities and locations may be an appropriate assessment tool to provide valuable insights into the burden of providing rides. The best performing burden indicator was the percentage of the ride-provision activity space that was not within the boundaries of the ride providers’ regular activity space
DOI
10.15760/trec.290
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40262
Recommended Citation
Mauldin, Rebecca L.; Mattingly, Stephen; Parekh, Rupal; Haque, Mahshid; Thomas, LaTisha; Tarbet, Zachary; Chowdhury, Farzana. Using Social Network Analysis to Optimize Access To Culturally Responsive And Affordable Transportation For Older Immigrants. NITC-RR-1302. Portland, OR: Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), 2022. http://doi.org/10.15760/trec.290
Description
This is a final report, NITC-RR-1302, from the NITC program of TREC at Portland State University, and may be found online at: https://nitc.trec.pdx.edu/research/project/1302.