Evaluation of people's Willingness, to use underground space using structural equation modeling - Case of Phoenix market city mall in Chennai city, India

In developing countries, hitherto, underground space use approach has been debated over many years; however, it has gradually started to emerge in slow pace due to lack of peoples willingness. This paper demonstrates a method to evaluate people's willingness to use underground space, analyzing the user experience from Phoenix Market City mall in Chennai city, India. Specifically, a Structural Equation Model is formulated to explore the impact of the relationship between people's willingness to use underground space and experience attributes. The result of this analysis shows that the generated model with the absolute fit indices affirms a good acceptable fit satisfying the necessary values. All the variables have positive coefficient values with good significance in relation to the willingness of using underground space. In effect, this paper concludes that proper planning with respect to comfort, safety and form aspects are bound to improve the people's overall willingness while resorting to the underground space. Further, periodical surveys and evaluation using SEM will help in improving the quality of existing underground space and the level of people's willingness in using it.