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Although the negative effect of air pollution on life satisfaction has been examined in many studies, comparative analyses of mobility-based exposures to air pollution and momentary wellbeing have been rare to date, despite the fact that they are essential to improve wellbeing. Drawing on individuals' space-time trajectories of two surveys conducted in 2012 and 2017 in Beijing, we investigate the temporal variations in activity satisfaction and mobility-based air pollution from monitoring stations and real-time air pollutant sensors, respectively. Furthermore, we explore how mobility-based air pollution dynamically influences activity satisfaction. The results show that air quality in Beijing improved from 2012 to 2017, and activity satisfaction increased as well. The negative relationship between them is more significant on workdays but insignificant on weekends. Moreover, real-time air pollution data show higher accuracy than monitor-based data, which suggests that future studies should pay more attention to real-time air pollution assessments.

Environmental justice is a crucial environmental and social problem. Previous research in the cities of developed countries has found that ethnic minorities and low-income people were disproportionately exposed to the residential environment with more serious environmental risks. This study proposed a transition from the residence-based perspective to a mobility-based and context-aware approach to reinterpret environmental justice with a focus on the air pollution issue in urban China. A novel research protocol combining geographic ecological momentary assessment and portable air pollutant sensors was developed to collect and analyze real-time data of air pollution exposure and psychological stress for residents living in the same residential neighborhood of Beijing, China. The results show that residents of different types of housing were exposed to varying PM 2.5 concentrations although they experienced similar levels of air pollution in their residential neighborhoods. Residents of public low-rent housing were the disadvantaged group because of their limited mobility, exposure to serious air pollution at home, and insensitive stress responses to air pollution. These findings not only uncover the mobility-based environmental justice issue in the context of government-led and egalitarianism-pursuing urban China, but also provide references for the residential mix policy on how to narrow the disparity in environmental pollution exposure from the perspective of human mobility., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Air pollution and noise are both ubiquitous environmental stressors that pose great threats to public health. Emerging evidence has noticed the combined health risks caused by the coexistence of traffic-related air pollutants and noise in the residential context. However, less is known about how mobile individuals are simultaneously exposed to multiple sources of air pollution and noise, and thus respond with more acute psychological responses beyond the residence. This study examines the co-exposures to fine particles (PM 2.5 ) and noise across spatiotemporal contexts where the concurrent exposures are jointly associated with momentary psychological stress. An innovative research protocol, including GPS-equipped activity-travel diaries, air pollutant and noise sensors, and ecological momentary assessment, was adopted to collect real-time data from a sample of residents in Beijing, China. The results showed a minor correlation between PM 2.5 and noise exposures after accounting for individual mobility and the spatiotemporal dynamics of these two environmental pollutants. Further, exposure to PM 2.5 was more associated with momentary psychological stress given the insignificant independent effect and the weak moderating effect of noise exposure. Three specific spatiotemporal contexts involving the health risks of co-exposures were delineated, including morning rush hours and traveling by public transits with intensified stress risks caused by combined exposures to air pollution and noise, workplaces with counteracting stress effect of both exposures, and evening time at home with stress-induced air pollution and stress-relieving social noise. In conclusion, the mobility-based and context-aware analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of the associations of co-exposures to environmental pollution and synchronous psychological stress in space and time., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

It has been widely acknowledged that air pollution has a considerable adverse impact on people's health. Disadvantaged groups such as low-income people are often found to experience greater negative effects of environmental pollution. Thus, improving the accuracy of air pollution exposure assessment might be essential to policy-making. Recently, the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP) has been identified as a specific form of possible bias when assessing individual exposure to air pollution and its health impacts. In this paper, we assessed the real-time air pollution exposure and residential-based exposure of 106 participants in a high-pollution community in Beijing, China. The study found that: (1) there are significant differences between the two assessments; (2) most participants experienced the NEAP and could lower their exposure by their daily mobility; (3) three vulnerable groups with low daily mobility and could not avoid the high pollution in their residential neighborhoods were identified as exceptions to this: low-income people who have low levels of daily mobility and limited travel outside their residential neighborhoods, blue-collar workers who spend long hours at low-end workplaces, and elderly people who face many household constraints. Public policies thus need to focus on the hidden environmental injustice revealed by the NEAP in order to improve the well-being of these environmentally vulnerable groups.

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Travel plays an indispensable role in daily life with regard to both individual health and subjective happiness. Using real-time environmental exposures and questionnaire survey data collected in Beijing, we apply the gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) and Shapley value machine learning methods to investigate the nonlinear relationship between microenvironmental exposure and travel satisfaction. The results show that microenvironment-related indicators collectively contribute to over 50 % of the predictive power for travel satisfaction, while controlling for trip feature and socio-demographic variables. Real-time air and noise exposures during trips show threshold effects on travel satisfaction, with threshold values for air pollution and noise being estimated as 35 μg/m3 and 61db (A), respectively. This study also investigates the complex interactions that exist among pollution during travel, exposure at the residential location and attention to pollution, and in so doing explores the potential varied risks to different groups and provides policy implications for the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With great concern over the health-promoting environment worldwide, there is a growing body of research into the neighborhood effects on health beyond the sole focus on individual socioeconomic disadvantages and lifestyle risks. Our study contributes to neighborhood health research by investigating the combined effects of multi-dimensional neighborhood environmental characteristics and recreational physical activity under different geographic contexts on residents' self-rated health. Drawing upon a health survey conducted in suburban Shanghai in 2017, we employ a series of multilevel models to examine how the multi-scale environmental and behavioral factors are related to residents' self-rated physical and mental health, respectively. The results show that the greening rate of the community, rather than accessibility to large-scale urban parks, is a significant indicator of self-rated health for suburban residents. Subjective evaluations on neighborhood safety and air pollution exposure are significantly associated with residents' physical and mental health, while neighborhood attachment matters more for mental health. Outdoor recreational exercises, especially in the environment of neighborhood green space, are conducive to better physical health, while indoor physical activity shows weaker and insignificant health benefits. These findings offer a promising way for public health policymakers and urban planners to implement place-based health interventions and develop health-supportive neighborhoods. • Investigate the combined effects of neighborhood environment and physical activity on self-rated health • Estimate the health effect of exercises performed in different geographic contexts • Green coverage in the community is significantly associated with physical and mental health. • Neighborhood attachment and travel satisfaction matter for mental health. • Outdoor recreational exercises have more health benefits than indoor activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Activity satisfaction and air and noise pollution vary in space and time. • Geographic contexts matter in activity satisfaction. • Perceived environmental exposures are significant covariates of wellbeing. • Perceived air pollution has a greater effect than noise on activity satisfaction. Understanding how mobility-based real-time exposures to environmental pollution influence activity satisfaction has great potential for improving subjective wellbeing. Using real-time data from Global Positioning System trajectories and portable sensors collected in Beijing, this study investigates whether and how individual's real-time and perceived exposures to air and noise pollution at a fine spatio-temporal resolution influence activity satisfaction while controlling for geographic contexts, activity characteristics, socio-demographic attributes, health and life circumstances. The results show that activity satisfaction and air and noise pollution vary greatly in various microenvironments. Perceived air and noise pollution are more significant covariates of activity satisfaction than objectively measured pollution, and air pollution has a greater effect than noise pollution on activity satisfaction. These findings indicate that more granular data should be collected to further examine the relationships among geographic microenvironment, personal exposure and wellbeing, and compact city design is of great potential for improving subjective wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]