Association between neighborhood built environment and resident leisure walking – A cross-sectional study in China

Abstract

Introduction

Physical activity has a vital influence in promoting health and sustainable development of society and environment. Leisure walking, as a widely embraced low-cost physical activity, can effectively help reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases and enhance health. Improving the neighborhood built environment may affect the quality of leisure walking, as an activity that depends upon features of the built environment.

Methods

Using data from the 2015 China Health and Nutrition Survey, we obtained a sample of 1006 residents from 134 neighborhoods in nine provinces east of the Heihe-Tengchong Line in China. We used logit mixed-effect models and linear mixed-effect models to measure associations between neighborhood built environment characteristics and leisure walking durations within urban, suburban, county-seat, and rural neighborhoods. We differentiated between leisure walking on weekdays and weekends.

Results

Residents in rural neighborhoods that had dirt or paved roads had shorter leisure walking durations compared with residents in rural neighborhoods that had mainly gravel roads. Residents in urban neighborhoods that had gyms had shorter leisure walking durations compared with residents in urban neighborhoods for which the nearest gym was outside the neighborhood. The presence of parks did not show any significant association with leisure walking durations in any neighborhood type. The presence of bus stops was associated with greater leisure walking durations in county-seat neighborhoods, as were more restaurants in suburban neighborhoods.

Conclusion

Seemingly mundane built environment factors such as road pavement type appeared to be more closely associated with the duration of leisure walking than previously studied parks. Different built environment factors were associated with leisure walking duration within specific neighborhood types. Further research should focus on the characteristics of leisure walking behavior in various spatial contexts and during different time periods to continue to reveal the complex interactions between built environment factors and leisure walking.