Accounting for the daily locations visited in the study of the built environment correlates of recreational walking (the RECORD Cohort Study)

Background Understanding how built environment characteristics influence recreational walking is of the utmost importance to develop population-level strategies to increase levels of physical activity in a sustainable manner. PurposeThis study analyzes the residential and non-residential environmental correlates of recreational walking, using precisely geocoded activity space data. MethodsThe point-based locations regularly visited by 4365 participants of the RECORD Cohort Study (Residential Environment and CORonary heart Disease) were collected between 2011 and 2013 in the Paris region using the VERITAS software (Visualization and Evaluation of Regular Individual Travel destinations and Activity Spaces). Zero-inflated negative binomial regressions were used to investigate associations between both residential and non-residential environmental exposure and overall self-reported recreational walking over 7. days. ResultsDensity of destinations, presence of a lake or waterway, and neighborhood education were associated with an increase in the odds of reporting any recreational walking time. Only the density of destinations was associated with an increase in time spent walking for recreational purpose. Considering the recreational locations visited (i.e., sports and cultural destinations) in addition to the residential neighborhood in the calculation of exposure improved the model fit and increased the environment-walking associations, compared to a model accounting only for the residential space (Akaike Information Criterion equal to 52797 compared to 52815). ConclusionsCreating an environment supportive to walking around recreational locations may particularly stimulate recreational walking among people willing to use these facilities.