Abstract
BackgroundNumerous cross-sectional studies have investigated the premise that the perception of crime will cause residents to constrain their walking; however the findings to date are inconclusive. In contrast, few longitudinal or prospective studies have examined the impact of crime-related safety on residents walking behaviours. This study used longitudinal data to test whether there is a causal relationship between crime-related safety and walking in the local neighbourhood.MethodsParticipants in the RESIDential Environments Project (RESIDE) in Perth, Australia, completed a questionnaire before moving to their new neighbourhood (n = 1813) and again approximately one (n = 1467), three (n = 1230) and seven years (n = 531) after relocating. Self-report measures included neighbourhood perceptions (modified NEWS items) and walking inside the neighbourhood (min/week). Objective built environmental measures were generated for each participant’s 1600 m neighbourhood at each time-point, and the count of crimes reported to police were generated at the suburb-level for the first three time-points only. The impact of crime-related safety on walking was examined in SAS using the Proc Mixed procedure (marginal repeated measures model with unrestricted variance pattern). Initial models controlled for demographics, time and self-selection, and subsequent models progressively adjusted for other built and social environment factors based on a social ecological model.ResultsFor every increase of one level on a five-point Likert scale in perceived safety from crime, total walking within the local neighbourhood increased by 18.0 min/week (p = 0.000). This relationship attenuated to an increase of 10.5 min/week after accounting for other built and social environment factors, but remained significant (p = 0.008). Further analyses examined transport and recreational walking separately. In the fully adjusted models, each increase in safety from crime was associated with a 7.0 min/week increase in recreational walking (p = 0.009), however findings for transport walking were non-significant. All associations between suburb-level crime and walking were non-significant.ConclusionsThis study provides longitudinal evidence of a potential causal relationship between residents’ perceptions of safety from crime and recreational walking. Safety perceptions appeared to influence recreational walking, rather than transport-related walking. Given the popularity of recreational walking and the need to increase levels of physical activity, community social and physical environmental interventions that foster residents’ feelings of safety are likely to increase recreational walking and produce public health gains.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12966-016-0343-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Numerous cross-sectional studies have investigated the premise that the perception of crime will cause residents to constrain their walking; the findings to date are inconclusive
Using a longitudinal study design, we focused on the safety-walking relationship, with progressive adjustment for other neighbourhood attributes that could mediate the relationship between safety and walking
Additional models revealed no evidence of curvature in the relationship between perceived safety from crime and walking, nor any effect modification by the main socio-demographic variables. For this sample of suburban residents, we found longitudinal evidence that perceived safety from crime was associated with increased time spent walking in the local neighbourhood, and with recreational walking
Summary
Numerous cross-sectional studies have investigated the premise that the perception of crime will cause residents to constrain their walking; the findings to date are inconclusive. Higher crime rates or perceptions of crime have been associated with lower levels of physical activity [4,5,6,7], whereas others report no association [8, 9], or even counterintuitive positive associations [10, 11]. In part, this could be explained by the considerable variation in the measures used to capture ‘safety from crime’. Given the lack of consensus in the literature to date on whether actual crime or the perception of crime impacts on physical activity, there is merit in focusing on and comparing studies that adopt similar measures of crime-related safety
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