Citation

Waygood EO, Sun Y, Letarte L. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2015; 12(12): 15900-15924.

Affiliation

Graduate School of Land Management and Regional Planning (ESAD), Laval University, 2325 des Biblotheques Street, Quebec, QC G1V 0A6, Canada. laurence.letarte.1@ulaval.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph121215027

PMID

26694429

Abstract

Active travel can contribute to physical activity achieved over a day. Previous studies have examined active travel associated with trips in various western countries, but few studies have examined this question for the Asian context. Japan has high levels of cycling, walking and public transport, similar to The Netherlands. Most studies have focused either on children or on adults separately, however, having children in a household will change the travel needs and wants of that household. Thus, here a household lifecycle stage approach is applied. Further, unlike many previous studies, the active travel related to public transport is included. Lastly, further to examining whether the built environment has an influence on the accumulation of active travel minutes, a binary logistic regression examines the built environment's influence on the World Health Organization's recommendations of physical activity. The findings suggest that there is a clear distinction between the urbanized centers and the surrounding towns and unurbanized areas. Further, active travel related to public transport trips is larger than pure walking trips. Females and children are more likely to achieve the WHO recommendations. Finally, car ownership is a strong negative influence.

Language: en