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- Title
A Longitudinal Analysis of the Influence of the Neighborhood Environment on Recreational Walking within the Neighborhood: Results from RESIDE.
- Authors
Christian, Hayley; Knuiman, Matthew; Divitini, Mark; Foster, Sarah; Hooper, Paula; Boruff, Bryan; Bull, Fiona; Giles-Corti, Billie
- Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is limited longitudinal evidence confirming the role of neighborhood environment attributes in encouraging people to walk more or if active people simply choose to live in activity-friendly neighborhoods. Natural experiments of policy changes to create more walkable communities provide stronger evidence for a causal effect of neighborhood environments on residents' walking. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to investigate longitudinal associations between objective and perceived neighborhood environment measures and neighborhood recreational walking. METHODS: We analyzed longitudinal data collected over 8 yr (four surveys) from the RESIDential Environments (RESIDE) Study (Perth, Australia, 2003-2012). At each time point, participants reported the frequency and total minutes of recreational walking/week within their neighborhood and neighborhood environment perceptions. Objective measures of the neighborhood environment were generated using a Geographic Information System (GIS). RESULTS: Local recreational walking was influenced by objectively measured access to a medium-/large-size park, beach access, and higher street connectivity, which was reduced when adjusted for neighborhood perceptions. In adjusted models, positive perceptions of access to a park and beach, higher street connectivity, neighborhood esthetics, and safety from crime were independent determinants of increased neighborhood recreational walking. Local recreational walking increased by 9 min/wk (12% increase in frequency) for each additional perceived neighborhood attribute present. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide urban planners and policy makers with stronger causal evidence of the positive impact of well-connected neighborhoods and access to local parks of varying sizes on local residents' recreational walking and health.
- Subjects
WESTERN Australia; CONFIDENCE intervals; CRIME; DOGS; GEOGRAPHIC information systems; LONGITUDINAL method; NATURE; PETS; PROBABILITY theory; PUBLIC spaces; RECREATION; RESEARCH funding; SAFETY; WALKING; ACCESSIBLE design of public spaces; RESIDENTIAL patterns; REPEATED measures design; DESCRIPTIVE statistics
- Publication
Environmental Health Perspectives, 2017, Vol 125, Issue 7, p1
- ISSN
0091-6765
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1289/EHP823