Survey of Korean pedestrians' natural preference for walking directions

•The majority of pedestrians preferred walking on the right side, regardless of the location.•No significant differences were found in the preferred walking direction by age or gender.•Significant discrepancies in the preferred walking direction depending on pedestrians'dominant hand and foot exist.•Left-handed and footed pedestrians are more likely to the Left-hand Traffic rules, while right-handed and footed are on the right side.•The dominant hand appears to have a greater impact on the pedestrian's preferred walking direction than the dominant foot.

The primary objective of this study was to investigate the stereotypes of Koreans regarding preferred walking directions when encountering various public walking facilities, and to provide useful information to pedestrians and traffic policy legislators. To this end, this study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, we conducted observational research on pedestrians' walking directions in ten different situations. In the second phase, six hundred Korean male and female subjects were selected to investigate the various statistics about their preferred walking directions and their employment characteristics in diverse walking facilities. The results showed that 59.3% abided by the Left-side Traffic rule while 40.7% abided by the Right-side rule. On the contrary, 73.7% of respondents showed preferences to the Right-side Traffic rule. Moreover, right-handed people showed strong tendencies to walk on the right side of the road and vice versa, hence suggesting that the direction people naturally prefer in walking should be a crucial determinant when regulating traffic policies.