A Study on the Space Layout and Configuration of Shopping Malls in Relation to Pedestrian Movement Behavior - Case of UAE

The research aims to understand the relationship between the popularity and attractiveness of commercial buildings, shopping malls and any relationship with visitor satisfaction. This would assist in designing new malls or commercial buildings, predict their degree of popularity, and help achieve both higher revenue resulting from increasing the number of visitors and their satisfaction, comfort and enjoyment of the space. This study will focus on the relationship between shopping mall popularity and wayfinding. Planned and unplanned visits to some specific areas inside the malls will be considered. These areas are: 1- Facilities: prayer rooms, and washrooms, etc.; 2- The largest areas in size and often with the highest number of visitors: food courts, cinemas, play areas; and 3- ATM machines. The objective of this paper is to verify three hypotheses: 1. The popularity of a mall is positively related to visitor satisfaction with wayfinding in the mall; 2. The popularity of a mall is positively related to visitor satisfaction with the location of facilities in the mall; 3. The location of facilities in a mall is positively related to visitor satisfaction with wayfinding in the mall. Surveys were conducted in the city of Abu Dhabi and the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique was used to verify these hypotheses