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Abstract
Walking has a positive impact on people’s emotional health. However, in the case of serious air pollution, it is controversial whether walking exercise can still improve individuals’ emotional health. Using data from the 2014 wave of the China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey, this study explored the relationship between walking and emotional health with different levels of environmental pollution. The results indicated that respondents who took regular walks had better emotional health than those who did not walk regularly. For those whose main mode of physical exercise was walking, the average number of walks per week was significantly and positively correlated with their emotional health; however, the average duration of the walk had no significant impact on their emotional health. Moreover, for those whose main mode of physical exercise was walking and who lived in neighborhoods with a polluted environment, regular walking still had a positive impact on their emotional health. This suggests that even if environmental pollution is serious, walking still plays an important role in regulating individuals’ mental health. We propose that in order to promote the emotional health of residents, it is necessary to create more public spaces for outdoor activities and simultaneously increase efforts to control environmental pollution.
Highlights
Economic development has improved individuals’ living standards but has created some environmental problems
In Model 2, including those for whom walking was the main physical exercise, the average number of walks per week was significantly and positively correlated with emotional health (B = 0.143, p < 0.01), but the average walk duration had no significant impact on emotional health
Walking has an important impact on the emotional health of individuals
Summary
Economic development has improved individuals’ living standards but has created some environmental problems. The issue of air pollution is becoming increasingly serious in many developing countries. The frequent occurrence of haze and other phenomena poses problems to individuals’ daily life and health [1]. Individuals tend to work long hours, and the work intensity is high; sedentary lifestyles are very common, with increasingly more individuals showing a lack of physical activity. All these factors affect individuals’ physical and mental health. It has been shown that physical inactivity may play an important mediating role in some physical and psychological disorders [3,4,5,6]
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