Examining the relationship between active transport and exposure to streetscape diversity during travel: A study using GPS data and street view imagery

Abstract

Active transport (AT)—physical activity (PA) during travel—can promote human health. Among built environment factors related to travel research, design refers to the street network features encouraging AT. The advent of street view images (SVIs) presents the potential to measure design during travel by capturing the eye-level built environments. Benefited by SVIs, this study innovatively introduces streetscape diversity—the interconnection of street view-derived built environment factors—during travel as the proxy to measure design from the street view perspective. Exposures to higher streetscape diversity could provide increased access to potential destinations and therapeutic landscapes, thereby promoting AT. Through integrating SVIs and young adults’ Global Positioning System (GPS) trajectories, this study utilized negative binomial regression models to assess the relationship between streetscape diversity and time spent in AT. Results indicate that the inclusion of streetscape diversity improves the model performance, and there is a positive relationship between streetscape diversity and AT. This finding indicates that increased access to travel routes with diverse streetscapes could increase the probability of participating in AT. Furthermore, integrating individual GPS data and SVIs allows more precise space-time measurement of individual environmental exposures.