Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK
2018
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin154410042185049 |
| id |
ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-ucin154410042185049 |
|---|---|
| record_format |
oai_dc |
| spelling |
ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-ucin1544100421850492021-08-03T07:09:15Z Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors Li, Jingjing Geography activity spaces neighborhood effects food accessibility built environment spatial contextual unit This dissertation research aims to investigate the relationships between built environment in various spatial contextual units and health-related behaviors in the domains of physical activity and food retail neighborhood environment. It has three research aims. The first aim is to examine how land use characteristics in both residential neighborhoods and activity spaces affect vehicle travel distance for non-work trips. The second one focuses on assessing how food accessibility in different spatial contextual units impact individuals’ grocery food shopping behaviors. The third one is to investigate how healthy food accessibility varies across different activity spaces and improve nuanced understanding of food accessibility in various spatial units.Previous research has employed residential neighborhoods as the spatial units to measure built environment features. As residential neighborhoods are incomplete representation of people’s actual spatial exposure areas, measuring built environment features only at residential neighborhoods might mischaracterize the associations of built environment with health-related behaviors and subsequently mislead the direction of policy interventions. Some recent studies have emerged to construct activity spaces around daily activity locations as the spatial units. However, the evidence on how the effects of built environment features on health-related behaviors vary across residential neighborhoods and activity spaces remains scarce. Further, few studies have focused on the effects in both physical activity and food environment domains simultaneously. In bridging the gaps, this research improves nuanced understanding of the effects of built environment features in both residential neighborhoods and various activity spaces on health-related behaviors.This research primarily relied on the GPS-based Household Interview Survey for the Cincinnati Ohio Region. To test the differences in associations of built environment features on health-related behaviors depending on various spatial contextual units, we constructed two spatial contextual units (residential neighborhood and activity space) for the first goal, three spatial contextual units (residential neighborhood, workplace exposure area, activity space) for the second goal, and three spatial contextual units (three different types of activity spaces) for the third goal. The results for the first aim show that high land use mixture would reduce vehicle travel distance for non-work trips significantly and land use mixture in activity spaces has stronger impacts on non-work trips. The findings for the second and third aims include: (1) Comparing with residential neighborhoods, healthy food accessibility in activity spaces have greater impacts on people’s actual visit of groceries; (2) Healthy food accessibility varies across different activity spaces and differs by individuals’ sociodemographic characteristics. This dissertation research contributes to literature in two aspects: (1) It enriches empirical evidence to support the conceptual reasoning of built environment interventions in obesity prevention policies; (2) It sheds new light on the definitions and delineations of spatial contextual units for built environment features. 2018 English text University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin154410042185049 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin154410042185049 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws. |
| collection |
NDLTD |
| language |
English |
| sources |
NDLTD |
| topic |
Geography activity spaces neighborhood effects food accessibility built environment spatial contextual unit |
| spellingShingle |
Geography activity spaces neighborhood effects food accessibility built environment spatial contextual unit Li, Jingjing Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors |
| author |
Li, Jingjing |
| author_facet |
Li, Jingjing |
| author_sort |
Li, Jingjing |
| title |
Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors |
| title_short |
Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors |
| title_full |
Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors |
| title_fullStr |
Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Understanding the Effects of Built Environments in Different Spatial Contextual Units on Individuals’ Health-related Behaviors |
| title_sort |
understanding the effects of built environments in different spatial contextual units on individuals’ health-related behaviors |
| publisher |
University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK |
| publishDate |
2018 |
| url |
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin154410042185049 |
| work_keys_str_mv |
AT lijingjing understandingtheeffectsofbuiltenvironmentsindifferentspatialcontextualunitsonindividualshealthrelatedbehaviors |
| _version_ |
1719455053143605248 |