Abstract
Active commuting to work (ACW) is beneficial to traffic, environment and population health. More evidence is needed on effective ways to promote ACW. This paper describes the protocol and baseline findings of a cluster-randomized controlled study, which aims to promote ACW with multilevel strategies in two large workplace areas in Tampere, Finland. In Phase 1, the impacts of environmental strategies (trail improvements) were evaluated in 11 workplaces within Area 1. In Phase 2, five more workplaces were recruited from Area 2 to evaluate the impacts of social and behavioral strategies customized for each workplace. For this purpose, the workplaces in both areas were randomly assigned into experimental group (EXP, n = 6 + 2), which promoted ACW with social and behavioral strategies or into comparison group (COM, n = 5 + 3), which participated in the data collection only. The primary indicator in both phases is the change in employees’ ACW. Secondary indicators are e.g., changes in employees’ self-rated health, wellbeing at work, restrictions to and motivation for ACW, adverse effects due to ACW and the use and quality of the main walking and cycling trails. Also process, efficiency and environmental evaluation is included. The study is the first one in Finland to combine interdisciplinary collaboration between practitioners and researchers working in the fields of transportation, urban design, physical activity and sustainable development to promote ACW. The findings benefit all stakeholders interested in promoting ACW in urban context.
Highlights
The prevalence of overweight and obesity is rising globally [1]
This paper describes the protocol, evaluation and baseline findings of the study aiming to promote Active commuting to work (ACW) through environmental, social and behavioral strategies in two urban areas including a total of 16 workplaces
Workplaces from Area 1 and five out of seven (71.4%) workplaces from Area 2 agreed to participate in the study (Table 2)
Summary
It is connected to the increased risk of cardiovascular diseases [2] and type 2 diabetes [3] and to extensive public health costs [4]. The high rate of obesity and non-communicable diseases can partly be explained by low level of physical activity [5], which has been identified as the fourth leading risk factor for mortality [6]. Active commuting to work (ACW) by walking or cycling imperceptibly increases the total amount of physical activity [7,8] affecting favorably to both physical [9,10,11,12] and mental health [13,14]. Active travel as a form of physical activity is accessible to most people [16]—to those too, who do not have money, time, place or interest for recreational exercise
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