Abstract
The health and welfare of older adults have raised increasing attention due to global aging. Cycling is a physical activity and mode of transportation to enhance the mobility and quality of life among older adults. Nevertheless, the planning strategies to promote cycling among older adults are underutilized. Therefore, this paper describes the nonlinear associations of the built environment with cycling frequency among older adults. The data were collected from the Zhongshan Household Travel Survey (ZHTS) in 2012. The modeling approach was the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model. The findings demonstrated that nonlinear relationships exist among all the selected built environment attributes. Within specific intervals, the population density, the land-use mixture, the distance from home to the nearest bus stop, and the distance from home to CBD are positively correlated to the cycling among older adults. Additionally, an inverse “U”-shaped relationship appears in the percentage of green space land use among all land uses. Moreover, the intersection density is inversely related to the cycling frequency among older adults. These findings provide nuanced and appropriate guidance for establishing age-friendly neighborhoods.
Highlights
With the improvement of healthcare and welfare, the global population of older adults is increasing rapidly
Before modeling the XGBoost, a variance inflation factor (VIF) test was performed to examine the possible multicollinearity among independent variables
We applied the XGBoost approach to distinguish the relative importance of selected variables and to illustrate the nonlinear association with the built environment variables
Summary
With the improvement of healthcare and welfare, the global population of older adults is increasing rapidly. Up until 2017, 9% of the world population (703 million) was 65 years old or above, and the ratio has been predicted to rise to 12% in 2030 and 16% in. More than one-quarter of older adults live in Asia, North America, and Europe [2]. From 2020 to 2050, Asia may witness the fastest growth in the population of older adults [3]. As the world’s most populated country, China is estimated to possess around 380 million older adults by 2050 [4]. Global aging has highlighted the demand for the improvement of living quality among older adults. Active travel (i.e., walking and cycling) has been widely recognized as a significant intervention to promote health [5,6]
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