Poor health outcomes from insufficient physical activity (PA) are a persistent public health issue. Public transit is often promoted for positive influence on PA. Although there is cross-sectional evidence that transit users have higher PA levels, this may be coincidental or shifted from activities such as recreational walking. We use a quasi-experimental design to test if light rail transit (LRT) generated new PA in a neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Participants (n=536) wore Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and accelerometers before (2012) and after (2013) LRT construction. We test within-person differences in individuals’ PA time based on changes in transit usage pre- versus post-intervention. We map transit-related PA to detect spatial clustering of PA around the new transit stops. We analyze within-person differences in PA time based on daily transit use and estimate the effect of daily transit use on PA time controlling for socio-demographic variables. Results suggest that transit use directly generates new PA that is not shifted from other PA. This supports the public health benefits from new high quality public transit such as LRT.
^P4 ' refers t0 the * ltemS °f 6VldeI1Ce Ŝtate University, 404C West 17th Avenue, Columbus, integrated into R, the final rating of subjec-Ohio 43210.tive probability of guilt or innocence.
Commitment making is commonly regarded as an effective way to promote proenvironmental behaviors. The general idea is that when people commit to a certain behavior, they adhere to their commitment, and this produces long-term behavior change. Although this idea seems promising, the results are mixed. In the current article, the authors investigate whether and why commitment is effective. To do so, the authors first present a meta-analysis of environmental studies containing a commitment manipulation. Then, the authors investigate the psychological constructs that possibly underlie the commitment effect. They conclude that commitment making indeed leads to behavior change in the short- and long term, especially when compared with control conditions. However, a better understanding is needed of the possible underlying mechanisms that guide the commitment effect. The authors see commitment making as a potentially useful technique that could be improved by following up on findings from fundamental research. They provide suggestions for future research and recommendations for improving the effectiveness of commitment-making techniques.
Altman's territoriality theory was used as a framework for examining neighborhood attachment. We hypothesized that attachment would be manifested in interrelated patterns of neighboring behaviors, attitudes indicating that the block was a secondary territory, and individual and communal displays of holiday decorations. Design features of cul-de-sacs were hypothesized to contribute to greater degrees of block attachment on cul-de-sacs than on through streets. Attachment was assessed through interviews with female residents and observations of holiday decorations on the target home and its block at Halloween and Christmas. Analyses indicated that attitudes and behaviors did combine to reflect degrees of neighborhood attachment, and neighborhood ties were stronger on cul-de-sacs than on through streets. Decorating at both Halloween and Christmas tended to be a block phenomenon (if the target home was decorated, so were the neighbors' homes); decorating at each time was related to aspects of neighborhood attachment. The results indicated that attachment can be a multilevel phenomenon that is related to the street's environmental design. The influence of street form is discussed as a facilitator rather than a cause of attachment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.