Browsing by Author "Pasanen, Sanna"

Nowadays there is a growing amount of empirical evidence stating that urban green areas provide health and wellbeing for people. However, there remain uncertainties concerning the processes through which people gain health from green space. Several processes might explain the health effect of urban green space, one possibility being the encouragement of physical activity. Various studies support the statement that urban green space increases physical activity, but there are also studies which question these results. Using a representative dataset from 2079 Finnish respondents aged 15 or over, this study aims to research further the controversial relation between urban green space and physical activity of people. With binary logistic regression analyses, this study explores whether urban green space has an effect on total physical activity or on non-recreational physical activity, meaning walking and cycling for transportation purposes. Analyses are controlled with variables measuring population density of a neighborhood, condition of walking and cycling lanes and respondents’ age, gender and level of education. The main result emerging from the analyses of this study is that, contrary to expectations, urban green space seems to increase the likelihood of insufficient physical activity. This trend was particularly visible when non-recreational physical activity was measured. But when controlled with population density, the effect of urban green space on physical activity is reversed, and it seems that urban green space increases the likelihood of particularly sufficient non-recreational physical activity. The findings of this study provide support for the argument that urban green space can encourage especially non-recreational physical activity in the neighborhoods with sufficient population density.