Exploring the Linkages Among Urban Form Travel Behavior and Public Health with Person Level Data From Smart Phone Applications.

摘要

The interaction between the built environment, travel behavior and public health is now a major concern for both researchers and urban planners. Currently, there is little empirical research that explores and examines the relationship between each of them. This study explores the linkages between an individual’s health, the urban form and his/her everyday travel behavior. The objective of this study is two-fold: (1) to develop a Smartphone Application that would serve as a platform to automatically collect person-level travel behavior data, and (2) to analyze the influence of daily activity patterns of an individual, his/her healthy-living and the urban form of their neighborhood of residence, on each other. In the past, scholars have explored different variables and linked them with the individual’s travel behavior. This study explores the linkages between an individual’s health, urban form and his/her everyday travel behavior. In order to capture accurate and comprehensive travel behavior information, a smartphone application is developed that can track user location for long periods without the need of user intervention. Focus is placed on designing the application to have minimum respondent burden and long-standing battery life of the smart device. Subjects are recruited through a web survey designed to collect information about the individual’s healthy living habits. Data from the application is regressed against the health measure data acquired from the survey. Results show that active modes of travel are positively associated with the person’s general health measures. The feasibility of this platform as a data collection method is highlighted while explaining the limitations due to the sample distribution and size.