Active Travel by Built Environment and Lifecycle Stage: Case Study of Osaka Metropolitan Area

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.

Population levels of, and inequalities in, active travel: A national, cross-sectional study of adults in Scotland

“…Similarly to previous studies in the U.K. ( Hutchinson et al, 2014 ), Australia ( Heesch et al, 2015 ), North America ( Waygood et al, 2015 ) and the Netherlands ( Scheepers et al, 2013 ) we found that those living in urban areas were more likely to actively travel a journey stage than those living in rural areas. In addition, our results highlighted that, although there was a difference in active travel between urban/rural areas, when adjusted for age, sex, employment and socioeconomic status the difference was not significant.…”

Age, sex and other correlates with active travel walking and cycling in England: Analysis of responses to the Active Lives Survey 2016/17

“…Life stages heavily interact with engagement in AT, including mode (walking or cycling). AT behaviour often reflects circumstances such as household income, number of children, employment, residence options and dozens of other factors (Barnes et al, 2016;Bonham and Wilson, 2012;Clark et al, 2014;Guell et al, 2012;Jones et al, 2015;Susilo et al, 2018;Waygood et al, 2015). Many of these factors highly correlate with sex and age, which suggests that best strategies to promote AT may link to age and sex of target participants.…”

A method to test the significance of differences between centrographic measures of dispersion

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