Active Ageing In Malaysia: Case Study In Georgetown 

Abstract

The concept of active ageing requires elderly to remain active and participate in beneficial activities, in which travel is one of the activities that support active ageing. Active ageing concept ensures that elderly continues participating in all social, economic, cultural, spiritual and civic affairs and activities at old age. To do so, it is imperative that cities and transportation are elderly friendly. Thus, this article intends to analyze the elderly’s travel patterns in Georgetown. This study is a quantitative research and a structured questionnaire was developed to collect the information of the respondents by using cluster sampling of 255 elderly (60 years old and above) in Georgetown. The study found that the majority (52.2%) of elderly in Georgetown are women and most of them (45.5%) are in the Middle Old age category (65 to 75 years). In terms of ethnicity, the majority (52.9%) of the elderly are Malays and most elderly (44.7%) have educational backgrounds up to primary school. The majority (67.1%) of the elderly were retired and 50.6% of them received a monthly income of RM1000 to RM4000. This study also identified the travelling behaviour among the elderly such as travel mode, trip purpose, trip category, and modes share in Georgetown.

Keywords: Active ageingtravel patternselderly

Introduction

Active aging refers to the process of optimizing the opportunities and involvement of elderly citizens in families and communities towards nurturing elderly citizens to improve their well-being. This aspect encompasses the quantity, quality and scope of social networks, reciprocal roles and relationships between lifelong generations (Department of Social Welfare Malaysia, 2019a, 2019b). The number of elderly people around the world is increasing at an unprecedented rate, not only in the developed/industrialized countries, but also in the developing countries. In Malaysia, The Elderly National Policy defines elderly as individuals aged 60 years and above as adopted in the United Nations World Assembly on Aging held in Vienna in 1982 and among ASEAN countries (Department of Social Welfare Malaysia, 2019a, 2019b). Based on the age structure of the population in Malaysia, the percentage of the elderly population (60 years and above) is seen rising. Similarly, the statistics of elderly population in Pulau Pinang were increases within five years. As shown in Figure 01 , the total of elderly in Pulau Pinang in 2014 were 188,500 elderly followed by 196,700 elderly in 2015. The number of elderly rose to 204,700 in 2016 and further increased to 214,300 elderly in 2017. In 2018, the number of elderly population continued to surge to 224,800 elderly. The statistics also reported the same proportion for each age group from 2014 to 2018, where the number of elderly is seen decreasing as age increases.

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Problem Statement

Mobility or the ability to get from place to place, is important for everyone. Mobility is defined as the ability of an individual to purposively move about her environment (Rosso, Taylor, Tabb, & Micheal, 2013). In addition, mobility enables people to conduct the activities of daily life, stay socially connected with their world, participate in activities that make life enjoyable, and maintain their quality of life (Kostyniuk, Renée, Zanier, Eby, & Molnar, 2012). According to Giuliano and Hwa Hu (2003), mobility or the ability to travel depends on individual resources: time, money, car availability, and physical capacity. Mobility also depends on the supply of transportation services and the spatial distribution of activity destinations. In addition, accessibility refers to the ease of movement between places, and hence is a function of spatial structure and transportation supply. As movement between any two places becomes less costly, accessibility increases.

In Malaysia, the government focused on developing a sustainable transport sector that drives economic growth and supports the well-being of the people in line with the status of developing countries. Through the National Transport Policy (2019) for 2019-2030, the government aims to provide mobility that meets the needs of the people and inclusively, enhances public transport mode sharing, provides a smart and safe transportation system and ensures that the transport sector utilizes resources sustainably. Consequently, many cities in the world have adopted the concept of sustainable mobility and offers numerous examples of best practices that can be implemented.

Travel patterns such as travel distance and travel time are related with the elderly's travel preferences. Previous research by Collia, Sharp, and Giesbrecht (2003) and Heaslip (2007) found that older people are less likely to travel compared to the younger age groups. In fact, the older people may also prefer to travel in a shorter distance. This means that the preferences of travel among the elderly can be associated with the socio-demographic factors as well as physical and mental conditions of the elderly.

Collia et al. (2003) found that only (12%) of the older people stated that medical conditions had affected their travel using special transportation services such as dial-a-ride on day trips. A previous study conducted by Heaslip (2007) showed that there was a dramatic increase in the number of travels made by older groups for medical, religious as well as social and recreational purposes. In addition, older people aged 75 years and older prefer to use the auto-mobile based transport due to reasons such as personal safety, convenience, reliability and flexibility. Other than that, the elderly’s non-driver is prefer to ask for rides to their friends or family (Coughlin, 2002).

In term of transport modes, the elderly most commonly uses the private car, although elderly car usage (as well as walking and cycling) decreases with older age to the benefit of public transport (Schwanen, Dijst, & Dieleman, 2001). In addition, the elderly with a high household income tend to use cars for travel (Kim, 2011), while Kim and Ulfarsson (2004) reported that elderly with higher incomes are more likely to drive or carpool. The elderly with a low household income or the unemployed elderly are more inclined to walk and use bicycles (Schwanen et al., 2001). In the United Kingdo, transport mode choices of the elderly and confirm that the private car is the most commonly used transport mode. However, unlike most of the earlier mentioned North American and Australian studies, their results indicate that the share of car use decreases at higher ages. Besides, elderly women are more likely to use the public transport (Schwanen et al., 2001), while Zong, Liu, and Zhang (2013) stated that cars are used the most during travels whose purpose is shopping.

As people are expected to live longer, and also preserve an active lifestyle longer, the total number of journeys made by the elderly will increase (Sundling, Berglund, & Pendrill, 2014). To do so, it is imperative that cities and transportation are elderly friendly. An important way to analyze this is to investigate the travel patterns among the elderly in a city, the main focus of this research. Thus, this article purposes to examine the travel patterns among the older people in Georgetown, Pulau Pinang.

Research Questions

The study seeks to answer the question of how factors such as travel mode, travel destinations, travel categories, and ways of sharing influence the travelling behaviour among the elderly parents in Georgetown.

Purpose of the Study

Understanding the travel patterns will add to the existing knowledge of elderly travel behaviours and may be useful in policy-making and transportation planning to accommodate the ageing population in Georgetown, Pulau Pinang. Specifically, the objectives are:

• To assess the mobility characteristics of the elderly in Georgetown, Pulau Pinang

• To analyse the travel behaviour among the elderly in Georgetown, Pulau Pinang

Research Methods

This study was conducted on 255 elderly aged 60 years and over in Georgetown, Penang in October until November 2018 using cluster sampling method based on age group, gender and ethnicity to select the sample of the elderly. Sociodemographic variables were assessed by a sociodemographic questionnaire designed and approved by the researcher and experts including age, gender, ethnicity, education level, occupational sector, income and family size. While, travel information of elderly consists of mobility, travel mode, trip purpose, trip category and reason not travel.

Findings

Conclusion

In general, most respondents involved in the study consist of elderly from middle age groups (65-75 years old), Malays, low education level, unemployed or retired, receive income from RM 1,000.00 to RM 4,000.00 and have size family less than 4 people. In terms of mobility, most of the elderly in Georgetown can walk alone. In terms of travel mode, the majority of elderly aged 60-64 years old use their own vehicles as passengers, aged 65-75 years old, traveling with carpool while elderly aged 76 and above use bicycle. In terms of travel, most Malay and Indian elderly travel to fulfil personal needs, while Chinese elderly travel to enjoy. With regard to travel mode, older men use their own vehicles as drivers, while older women use public transport. In terms of category trip, older men and women travel on personal matters. With respect to the reason not to travel, most Malays and Indians state the reason for staying home, while Chinese elderly claim health reasons. In terms of income, elderly with no income prefer to use their own vehicles as passengers, while elderly earn less than RM1000 using public transport, while elderly receiving monthly income of RM 1,000 - RM 4,000 and above RM4000 using their own vehicle as a driver. The findings also found that most people use their own vehicles as drivers, using their own vehicles as passengers, public transport and walking for family commitments, hospital appointments, friend invitations, fun and pleasure, work/business and personal needs.

The findings suggest several implications for transportation policy. The government needs to provide an efficient and equitable urban structure, as far as possible, to enable all its members, especially older peoples to all areas and facilities, as well as to enable everyone to enjoy maximum urban living. In addition, the government also needs to plan urban transport effectively. The Federal Government is responsible for transportation plans, policy guidelines and matters relating to overall transportation planning and administration. Particular attention should be paid to areas around major public transport stations to ensure that they incorporate facilities that allow them to easily reach out to older persons and disabled people. The government also needs to provide guidelines and standards for the needs of the elderly and the disabled to be adopted on new pedestrian networks, terminals and public transport stations as well as various mod interchange stations. The use of bicycles will continue to be encouraged as a form of leisure and as an alternative of private transportation for short trips in residential and recreational areas.

Acknowledgments

This research benefited from USM RU Top-Down research grant 1001/PSOSIAL/8070001.

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