Distance and perception of safety of the built environment are predominant factors influencing walking and bicycling to school: A systematic review

Abstract

Active Travel to School presents a range of potential benefits for schoolchildren and their communities, thus attracting considerable scholarly attention from the spheres of urban transportation, public health, and environmental sustainability. Despite the potential benefits, prior research has documented a global decline in active travel to school due to various interrelated factors. This review discuses the overarching factors influencing active travel to school (ATS). Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, we conducted a comprehensive literature search in eight electronic databases—Global Health, PubMed, Web of Science, ProQuest, Medline, Science Direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar—in addition to citation searching. School distance and parental perceptions of safety emerged as predominant factors influencing ATS. The findings indicate that long distances to school and negative perceptions of safety of the built environment (school and neighborhood) act as barriers to ATS, while shorter distances to school and positive perceptions of safety of the built environment facilitate ATS. Although with varying distance thresholds, our findings suggest that increasing distance to school is correlated with decreasing likelihood of utilizing ATS, whereas shorter travel distance is associated with higher adoption and maintenance of ATS. Implications of these findings are discussed, which in our opinion, may guide policymakers towards making walking and bicycling to school encouraging for school children.