Abstract
With the aggravation of rural aging, the well-being and self-rated health level of older people in rural communities are significantly lower than those in urban communities. Past studies hold that mobility is essential to the quality of life of the elderly, and well-being depends on their own adaptation strategies in the built environment. Therefore, this study combines three key factors related to active aging: environment, health and mobility, and assumes that the elderly with good health status will have environmental proactivity and a wider range of daily mobility in a poor rural built environment. This study attempts to track daily mobility by using a space–time path method in time geography and then to explore the relationship between outdoor mobility and older people’s self-rated health. A 1-week mobility path survey for 20 senior citizens of Xishi Village, a typical rural village in Taiwan, was conducted by wearing a GPS sports watch. A questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews were done to provide more information about the seniors’ personal backgrounds and lifestyles. The results show that when the built environment is unfit to the needs of daily activities, half of the participants can make adjustment strategies to go beyond the neighborhoods defined by administrative units. Correlation analysis demonstrated that mental health is associated with daily moving time and distance. In addition, men have higher self-rated health scores than women, and there are significant statistical differences between married and widowed seniors in daily outing time and distance. This exploratory study suggests that in future research on rural health and active aging in rural areas, understanding the daily outdoor mobility of the elderly can help to assess their health status and living demands and quickly find out whether there is a lack of rural living services or environmental planning.
Highlights
A rapidly ageing population is a common phenomenon in the demographic changes of countries all over the world [1]
Based on the results of the global positioning system (GPS) and Social functioning (SF)-36 questionnaire survey, it shows that outdoor mobility is related to self-rated health
Will select proactive behaviors to adapt existing environment; their daily mobility often extends beyond the local neighborhood
Summary
A rapidly ageing population is a common phenomenon in the demographic changes of countries all over the world [1]. Taiwanese society is about to face the challenge of a rapidly increasing elderly population in the near future, and the percentage of people with disabilities and dementia will grow significantly as many other countries [2]. Compared with the urban population, rural residents have less access to services and activities because of poor socio-economic conditions. The rural elderly may face greater risks of social isolation, reduced mobility, lack of support and insufficient medical care [5]. It is reported that rural elders have a higher level of stress and lower levels of well-being and quality of life than urban elders [6,7,8].
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