In the scenario that people are more and more familiar with walking activities, walking has gradually become a crucial means of mobility in urban life. Indeed, it was also claimed that walking is the most common activity undertaken by travelers (Hall & Ram, 2019). No matter the purpose of walking is, even to access a destination or just for leisure, tourists may appear to be pedestrians at a particular time of the day. Therefore, it is essential to keep the walking environment safe, comfortable, convenient, and interesting. However, as a city in a Southeast Asian country, Hue was initially designed to make the priority for automobile vehicle users. Thus, residents are not familiar with walking activities. Hence, it is definitely that both local and tourist pedestrians are struggling with different issues when walking in the city. For that reason, this thesis aims to investigate the perception of walking tourists to display the advantages and disadvantages of the city’s walking environment.
In order to examine how tourists were satisfied with the city’s walking environment, this study employed the two cases of walking areas with contrasting backgrounds. The two cases are both famous tourist destinations with different types of urban planning. Both surveys and interviews or semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data for the current research. The participants were asked about four categories of a walkable area, including connectivity and accessibility, safety, comfort, and interest. Lately, the data will be analyzed by SPSS in combination with photographs and observations to get a better understanding of Hue’s walking condition.
The finding of this study revealed that the built environment has a considerable impact on the tourist’s satisfaction. More specifically, even in the same city, the difference in the built environment, such as façade, landscape, and infrastructure can bring distinctive feelings for the walkers. Furthermore, the result also showed that the city’s walking environments currently still have a lot of issues that need to be upgraded. It is hoped that the data can be used as the primary information for future research. The ultimate purpose is to get a more comprehensive understanding of the city’s walking environment to make Hue gradually become a walkable city.

In the scenario that people are more and more familiar with walking activities, walking has gradually become a crucial means of mobility in urban life. Indeed, it was also claimed that walking is the most common activity undertaken by travelers (Hall & Ram, 2019). No matter the purpose of walking is, even to access a destination or just for leisure, tourists may appear to be pedestrians at a particular time of the day. Therefore, it is essential to keep the walking environment safe, comfortable, convenient, and interesting. However, as a city in a Southeast Asian country, Hue was initially designed to make the priority for automobile vehicle users. Thus, residents are not familiar with walking activities. Hence, it is definitely that both local and tourist pedestrians are struggling with different issues when walking in the city. For that reason, this thesis aims to investigate the perception of walking tourists to display the advantages and disadvantages of the city’s walking environment.
In order to examine how tourists were satisfied with the city’s walking environment, this study employed the two cases of walking areas with contrasting backgrounds. The two cases are both famous tourist destinations with different types of urban planning. Both surveys and interviews or semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data for the current research. The participants were asked about four categories of a walkable area, including connectivity and accessibility, safety, comfort, and interest. Lately, the data will be analyzed by SPSS in combination with photographs and observations to get a better understanding of Hue’s walking condition.
The finding of this study revealed that the built environment has a considerable impact on the tourist’s satisfaction. More specifically, even in the same city, the difference in the built environment, such as façade, landscape, and infrastructure can bring distinctive feelings for the walkers. Furthermore, the result also showed that the city’s walking environments currently still have a lot of issues that need to be upgraded. It is hoped that the data can be used as the primary information for future research. The ultimate purpose is to get a more comprehensive understanding of the city’s walking environment to make Hue gradually become a walkable city.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii
ABSTRACT ii
LIST OF FIGURES ix
LIST OF CHARTS xii
LIST OF TABLES xiii
LIST OF APPENDIX xiv

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Research background 1
1.1.1 The importance of walkability in tourism industry 1
1.1.2 The current status of walking environment in Asia and Vietnam 3
1.1.3 The current status of walking environment in the research area of Hue City: Citadel area and Walking Streets area 10
1.2 Research objective 11
1.3 Research scope and limitations 11
1.3.1 Research scope 11
1.3.2 Research limitations 13

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW & METHODOLOGY 15
2.1 Literature review 15
2.1.1 Accessibility and connectivity 16
2.1.2 Safety 20
2.1.3 Comfort 22
2.1.4 Interest 23
2.1.5 Conceptual framework 25
2.2. Methodology 25
2.2.1 Field survey 25
2.2.2 Induction 27
2.2.3 Analysis method 28

Chapter 3: GENERAL INFORMATION OF HUE CITY AND THE WALKING ENVIRONMENT IN HUE CITY 30
3.1 Overview of Hue city 30
3.1.1 Location and administration 30
3.1.2 Climate 30
3.1.3 Culture 31
3.2 Field survey on selected cases 31
3.2.1 Case study 1: Hue’s Citadel 31
3.2.2 Case study 2: Hue’s walking streets area 43
3.3 The similarities and differences between the Citadel area and the Walking Streets area 51
3.3.1 The similarities between two case studies 51
3.3.2 The differences between two case studies 54

Chapter 4: RESULT & DISCUSSION 57
4.1 Questionnaire result 57
4.2 Evaluation and Discussion 62
4.2.1 General evaluation on the quality of walking environment in Hue city 62
4.2.2 Discussion about tourist satisfaction and walking environment of Hue city 95
4.4 Recommendation to uphold walkability in Hue city 102
4.4.1 Hue city in general 102
4.4.2 The Walking Street 107
4.4.2 The Citadel 109
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION 112
REFERENCES 114
APPENDIX 1 121