Comparing the impacts of built environment across different objective life neighborhoods on the out-of-home leisure activities of employed people using massive mobile phone data

Abstract

An adequately-designed built environment can prompt willingness of employed people to carry out out-of-home leisure activities. However, since much of the literature relies on static or perceived residential neighborhoods which may have substantial deviations from realistic environmental exposure, some associations between out-of-home leisure activities and built environment may be biased. In this study, we develop three kinds of objective life neighborhood measurements (residential space, job-housing space, and activity space) using massive mobile phone data, to distinguish the differentiated impacts of built environment across different objective life neighborhoods on the out-of-home leisure activities. According to the results, the activity space makes the exploratory models far more reasonable and persuasive than other life neighborhoods, especially in urban development areas, and the benefits of activity space cannot be attained solely by expanding the distance parameters of residential space or job-housing space. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the relative importance of built environment for out-of-home leisure activities, especially the factors of population density, proportion of urban green space, and metro coverage rate, may be underestimated if the ordinary life neighborhoods are applied. This study provides some references for urban planners to formulate effective environmental intervention strategies to maintain active and healthy lifestyles of employed people.