1. Built environment and active commuting: Rural-urban differences in the U.S
- Author
-
Ming Wen, Neng Wan, and Jessie X. Fan
- Subjects
Economic growth ,Built environment ,Health (social science) ,Logit ,Poison control ,Occupational safety and health ,Article ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Rurality ,11. Sustainability ,Active transportation ,Urban ,Rural ,030212 general & internal medicine ,lcsh:Social sciences (General) ,Socioeconomics ,030505 public health ,business.industry ,lcsh:Public aspects of medicine ,Health Policy ,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health ,lcsh:RA1-1270 ,Moderation ,Census tracts ,Active commuting ,Geography ,Work (electrical) ,Public transport ,lcsh:H1-99 ,0305 other medical science ,business - Abstract
The purpose of this research was to investigate rural-urban differences in participation rates in three modes of active commuting (AC) and their built environmental correlates. The 2010 Census supplemented with other datasets were used to analyze AC rates in percent of workers age 16+ walking, biking, or taking public transportation to work in 70,172 Census tracts, including 12,844 rural and 57,328 urban. Random-intercept factional logit regressions were used to account for zero-inflated data and for clustering of tracts within counties. We found that the average AC rates were 3.44% rural and 2.77% urban (p, Highlights • The average active commuting prevalence in all U.S. tracts is 2.89%, 0.55%, and 4.89% for walking, biking, and public transportation to work around 2010, respectively. • Rural tracts have a higher prevalence of walking but lower prevalence of biking and public transportation to work than urban tracts. • Rural-urban differences in the associations between AC and environment are complex, with some variables showing opposite correlational directions, such as street connectivity for walking to work and population density for both walking to work and public transportation to work. • In developing strategies to promote AC, attention needs to be paid to rural-urban differences in order to avoid unintended consequences of “one-size fit all” type of approaches.
- Published
- 2017