Environmental conditions around itineraries to destinations as correlates of walking for transportation among adults: the RECORD cohort study

• Published in: PloS one 2014-05, Vol.9 (5), p.e88929-e88929
• Main Authors: Karusisi, Noëlla, Thomas, Frédérique, Méline, Julie, Brondeel, Ruben, Chaix, Basile
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Adults; Aged; Biology and Life Sciences; Cardiovascular disease; Cohort analysis; Cohort Studies; Commuting; Computer and Information Sciences; Density; Earth Sciences; Ecology, environment; Education; Environment Design - trends; Environmental conditions; Environmental factors; Environmental quality; Epidemiology; Exercise; Female; Habits; Health; Health care; Humans; Life Sciences; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Metropolitan areas; Middle Aged; Multilevel; Neighborhoods; Paris; Physical activity; Preventive medicine; Public health; Regression analysis; Residence Characteristics; Residential areas; Residential density; Self Report; Social Sciences; Socioeconomic Factors; Studies; Supermarkets; Surveys and Questionnaires; Transportation; Transportation industry; Travel; Urban Population; Walking; Walking - physiology; Walking - psychology; Workers; Workplace
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088929

Assessing the contextual factors that influence walking for transportation is important to develop more walkable environments and promote physical activity. To advance previous research focused on residential environments and overall walking for transportation, the present study investigates objective environmental factors assessed around the residence, the workplace, the home--work itinerary, and the home--supermarket itinerary, and considered overall walking for transportation but also walking to work and to shops. Data from the RECORD Study involving 7290 participants recruited in 2007-2008, aged 30-79 years, and residing in the Paris metropolitan area were analyzed. Multilevel ordinal regression analyses were conducted to investigate environmental characteristics associated with self-reported overall walking for transportation, walking to work, and walking to shops. High individual education was associated with overall walking for transportation, with walking to work, and walking to shops. Among workers, a high residential neighborhood education was associated with increased overall walking for transportation, while a high workplace neighborhood education was related to an increased time spent walking to work. The residential density of destinations was positively associated with overall walking for transportation, with walking to work, and with walking to shops, while the workplace density of destinations was positively associated with overall walking for transportation among workers. Environmental factors assessed around the itineraries were not associated with walking to work or to the shops. This research improves our understanding of the role of the environments on walking for transportation by accounting for some of the environments visited beyond the residential neighborhood. It shows that workers' walking habits are more influenced by the density of destinations around the workplace than around the residence. These results provide insight for the development of policies and programs to encourage population level active commuting.