Contribution of urban destinations to physical activity, insight from nationwide smartphone trajectory data in China

Abstract

Past studies have investigated the association between the built environment and active lifestyle, but the environmental exposure in most of these studies was measured in residential settings with predefined boundaries. In this study, we investigated the relationship between destinations in cities and walking behaviors in national and provincial capital cities in China based on a nationwide smartphone dataset. We identified destinations that were strongly and consistently associated with walking behaviors based on geographic information systems (GIS) spatial analysis. Results from this study suggest that certain components, especially parks, rivers, running tracks, of the built environment were positively associated with walking behaviors. Parks were consistently associated with more frequent walking behaviors while rivers were associated with longer walking trajectories. Findings from this study help better understand to what extent urban destinations influence physical activities and support evidence-based urban planning and health promotion in cities.