The Influences of Built Environment on Adolescents’ Physical Activities:An Empirical Study of Junior High School Students in Taipei Nangang District

• Main Authors: Ting, Tzu-Cheng, 丁子城
• Other Authors: Lin, Jen-Jia
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99891410489526475623

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 都市計劃研究所 === 99 === According to the World Health Organization’s researches, the main reason of causing chronic disease is physical inactivity. Although numerous factors affecting physical activities, public health researchers mostly focused on individual factors and ignored environmental factors. Increasing researches explore the relationships between built environment and physical activity in recent years while these researches majorly investigated adults or children and ignored adolescents. Futhermore, the domestic studies on physical activities are majorly explored for the strategies of public health, sports or leisures and lack discussions for urban development strategies. Therefore, the objective of this study is to empirically examine the impacts of built environment on physical activities for the adolescents of junior high school students.. This study majorly focused on the following three issues: (1) effects of built environment on an adolescent’s frequency and duration of moderate or vigorous physical activities for leisure / sports within a week ; (2) effects of built environment on an adolescent’s frequency and duration of walking or biking for transportation within a week; and, (3) effects of built environment on whether an adolescent achieving the recommended thresholds of moderate or vigorous physical activities for leisure / sports within a week. The study sample included 269 junior high school students studying in Chengde Junior High School, Nan Gang High School and Cheng Zheng Junior High School. The physical activity data of sample were obtained through the survey of children and adolescents self-administration short version of International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ); and the built Environment data were from statistics reports and geographical information system. Various econometric methods including ordered logit model, negative binomial regression model and binary logit model were employed to analyze the the duration, frequency and achieving recommended threshold of physical activities. The results reveal that building density (+), mixed land uses (-), street density (+), daily life activity locations (+) and distance to transit stations (-) significantly affected various physical activities in consistent relationships. However, population density, intersection density and block size significantly affected various physical activities in different relationships. The walkability index used in previous researches did not present significant relationships with physical activities. Finally, based on the empirical results, this study proposed numerous urban development strategies for land use planning, urban design and public transportation planning.