01-12-2016, 10:38 AM
For malls, the equation is different. Malls are destinations, and the oft-quoted numbers are for street-level merchants.
The going narrative for those studies is that a cyclist or pedestrian is more likely to see someplace they might want to stop (because they're going slower) and are more likely to then stop (because parking is a small/non-issue, respectively) than a motorist.
For malls, you've already made the decision to go to that mall. How you get there is a matter of value propositions from then on (how hard is it to carry your purchases, how bad is the parking/traffic, how good is the transit, and so forth).
My unresearched-but-verifiable-by-data hypothesis is that the effect is more pronounced for small businesses at street level than it would be for complexes. I'm not sure that it's terribly big of an effect, though, as the amount a household spends a month is somewhat fixed. What could be changed by this sort of thing is _where_ that spend happens, not _whether_ it happens or not.
The going narrative for those studies is that a cyclist or pedestrian is more likely to see someplace they might want to stop (because they're going slower) and are more likely to then stop (because parking is a small/non-issue, respectively) than a motorist.
For malls, you've already made the decision to go to that mall. How you get there is a matter of value propositions from then on (how hard is it to carry your purchases, how bad is the parking/traffic, how good is the transit, and so forth).
My unresearched-but-verifiable-by-data hypothesis is that the effect is more pronounced for small businesses at street level than it would be for complexes. I'm not sure that it's terribly big of an effect, though, as the amount a household spends a month is somewhat fixed. What could be changed by this sort of thing is _where_ that spend happens, not _whether_ it happens or not.