Neighbourhood and trip-based greenspace in four European areas: Associations with physical activity

Abstract

Background/Aim: Residential greenspace has been associated with beneficial health in many contexts. An important pathway to health may be opportunities for outdoor physical activity (PA). We used data from the HEALS study, which was conducted in four European areas (Edinburgh, UK; Netherlands; Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece), to examine pathways between greenspace and outdoor PA.Methods: We included three greenspace indicators (Normalised Difference Vegetation Index [NDVI], tree cover density [TCD], and green land use [GLU]) and used personal PA data collected from the Fitbit flex and the ‘Moves’ mobile phone app to assign daily minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and metabolic equivalent task (MET)-minutes of individual trips, respectively. We employed mixed-effects models to assess 1) residential greenspace at buffers of 300 m and 1,000 m with daily MVPA-minutes and 2) average trip-based greenspace with MET-minutes. Models included data from individuals with at least four valid days of data and were adjusted for bluespace, age, sex, car ownership, dog ownership, season, weekday/weekend day, and local meteorology; we assessed effect modification by activity (i.e., walking or cycling).Results: The analysis of residential greenspace and MVPA-minutes (n=118 subjects) did not produce any consistent associations at either the 300 m or 1,000m buffer. Greenspace coefficients based on individual trip averages were positive and statistically significant in fully adjusted models (n=60 subjects; n= 1,014 trips): NDVI=7.34 MET-minutes (95% CI = 2.25 to 12.44) per 0.1-unit increase; TCD=9.16 MET-minutes (95% CI = 2.63 to 15.69) per 10 percentage point increase; GLU=3.15 MET-minutes (95% CI = 0.12 to 6.17) per 0.1 unit increase. Associations appeared to be greater with cycling compared to walking.Conclusions: Our interpretation is that more strenuous or longer walking and cycling trips occurred in environments with more greenspace, but residential greenspace did not have a clear link with physical activity.