Travel satisfaction as an equity lens: a scoping review

Transport equity has traditionally been assessed through objective indicators such as accessibility, affordability, and travel times, yet these measures overlook the experiential dimensions that shape whether mobility systems are genuinely fair, inclusive, and usable. Growing evidence shows that individuals with similar transport provision can encounter profoundly unequal journeys, influenced by safety and security concerns, discomfort, unpredictability, or emotional burden, highlighting the need for equity evaluations that incorporate subjective experience. Travel satisfaction has therefore emerged as a promising experiential indicator capable of revealing inequities that conventional metrics routinely miss. This scoping review synthesises 28 peer-reviewed articles published between 2017 and (July) 2025 that examine the relationship between travel satisfaction and transport equity across diverse contexts. The findings show that satisfaction consistently exposes social and spatial inequities, with lower ratings concentrated among low-income groups, women, older adults, travellers with disabilities, and residents of peripheral neighbourhoods. Findings suggest that satisfaction may capture unmet mobility needs, capability constraints, and emotional work, offering a more nuanced understanding of needs fulfilment than accessibility metrics alone. Findings suggest further that satisfaction can provide actionable guidance for equitable policy prioritisation by identifying locations where objective accessibility is high but experiential quality is low, and by validating the social impacts of major transport investments. The review develops a conceptual model positioning travel satisfaction as a diagnostic, mediating, and normative lens within transport equity analysis. It highlights methodological and geographic gaps in existing evidence and identifies opportunities for advancing satisfaction-based approaches in policy and research. Overall, travel satisfaction was found to offer a critical pathway toward mobility systems that are not only efficient and sustainable, but also just, inclusive, and experientially supportive.