Differences in Park Walking, Comparing the Physically Inactive and Active Groups: Data from mHealth Monitoring System in Seoul.

Youngjun Park,Sohyun Park,Sunjae Lee

doi:10.3390/ijerph19010395

Youngjun Park, Sohyun Park + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010395

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Abstract

Despite the overall increase in physical activities and park uses, the discrepancies between physically inactive and active people have increasing widened in recent times. This paper aims to empirically measure the differences in walking activity in urban parks between the physically inactive and active. As for the dataset, 22,744 peoples’ 550,234 walking bouts were collected from the mHealth system of the Seoul government, using the smartphone healthcare app, WalkOn, from September to November 2019, in Seocho-gu district, Seoul, Korea. We classified the physically inactive and active sample groups, based on their regular walking (≥150 min of moderate-to-vigorous walking activity a week), and analyzed their park walking activities. We found that while there was no significant difference in walking measures of non-park walking between the sample groups, the difference did exist in park walking. The park walking average in the physically active group had more steps (p = 0.021), longer time (p = 0.008), and higher intensity (p < 0.001) of walking than that in the inactive group. Each park also revealed differences in its on-site park walking quantity and quality, based on which we could draw the list of ‘well-walked parks’, which held more bouts and more moderate-to-vigorous physical activities (MVPAs) than other parks in Seocho-gu district. This paper addresses how park walking of physically inactive and active people is associated with multiple differences in everyday urban walking.

Highlights

Given a wide consensus that urban facilities play a role in reducing sedentary behaviors and physical inactivity, urban parks have been a focus as one of the most healthpromoting urban facilities [1,2]
Studies have found that demographic factors and park characteristics are associated with park use [3,10], but little is known about physically inactive people who are in need of the health intervention [11]
Its algorithm considers walking activities meeting the criteria of three features (≥1000 steps, ≥10 min, ≥100 steps/min) as moderate-to-vigorous physical activities (MVPAs) walking [12,26,27]

Summary

Introduction

Given a wide consensus that urban facilities play a role in reducing sedentary behaviors and physical inactivity, urban parks have been a focus as one of the most healthpromoting urban facilities [1,2]. The positive associations of walking activity with built environmental features of parks have been recognized [3,4]. Research has been conducted on the urban environmental and behavioral aspects of parks in terms of the physical activity, for example, walking activity in park. Despite the overall increase in physical activity and park use, discrepancies between physically active and inactive people increase, and those who are not physically active have yet to participate in park activities [6,7]. The group of physical inactivity, categorized as not achieving 150 min of moderate-to-vigorous-intensity physical activity per week, needs to be spotlighted in order to make significant health intervention changes [8,9]. Studies have found that demographic factors and park characteristics are associated with park use [3,10], but little is known about physically inactive people who are in need of the health intervention [11]

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