11:30 AM - 11:45 AM
[029] The role of green spaces in physical activity in Seoul: Focusing on Residence and Workplaces
Keywords:green spaces, physical activity, walking behavior, public health, Seoul
Urban green spaces are known to influence public health. The existing literature mainly focused on the influence of residential environment on physical activity and walkability. Despite the importance of workplace environment, there remains a paucity of evidence on the green spaces of workplace on people’s physical activity during a day. This study aims to analyze the influence of green spaces on people’s park usage and physical activity focusing on both residential and workplace characteristics. A total of 1,073 respondents living and working in Seoul were surveyed and the spatial information of their residential and work places are geo-coded using the ArcGIS program. A subset of variables containing the road-network accessibility to parks and the built environment characteristics of home- and work-places were included in the model of ordinal logistic regression to analyze the impact of greenspace accessibility in respondents’ walking behavior. The paper investigated a differential impact of green spaces between home- and work-places according to the type of green spaces and different purpose of park usage. People who have a better accessibility to large green spaces from home and work places tend to walk more. The majority park usage in a residential area is conducted for an exercise purpose whereas the work-place parks are mainly used for an appointment purpose. The findings provided an important opportunity to advance the understanding of the role of green spaces in enhancing public health.