Journal article 34 views 4 downloads
Understanding the interactions that children and young people have with their natural and built environments: A survey to identify targets for active travel behaviour change in Wales
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Kim Knowles,
Tracie McKinney ,
Amy Mizen ,
Catherine Purcell
PLoS ONE, Volume: 19, Issue: 10, Start page: e0311498
Swansea University Author:
Amy Mizen
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© 2024 Holmes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).
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DOI (Published version): 10.1371/journal.pone.0311498
Abstract
Active travel offers many societal benefits, including improving people's mental and physical health and minimising our impacts on the environment. Increasing active travel is particularly important amongst children and young people (CYP), who are building habits which they will carry into adul...
| Published in: | PLoS ONE |
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| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
2024
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68122 |
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| Abstract: |
Active travel offers many societal benefits, including improving people's mental and physical health and minimising our impacts on the environment. Increasing active travel is particularly important amongst children and young people (CYP), who are building habits which they will carry into adulthood. Studies on active travel amongst CYP are limited, however, with most research focusing on adult participants or on adult perceptions of children. This study sought to understand CYP's interactions with the built and natural environment-and therefore their access to active travel-through the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour (COM-B) model. With a stakeholder group representing local government, youth organisations and active travel organisations, we co-created two bilingual questionnaires-one for young people aged 12-16 years living in Wales and the other for parents of young people aged 12-16 years living in Wales. Both questionnaires collected information on behaviour and perceived capability, opportunity and motivation of CYP to engage with their natural and built environments. The questionnaires included a discrete choice experiment (DCE), which proposed a series of binary choice questions indicating preferences based on landscape, journey time and type of travel. A total of 124 questionnaires (38 young people and 86 parents) were returned for analysis. These data indicate that CYP's time spent outdoors is not dependent upon geography (rural/urban/suburban), season, or school holidays. There was a significant difference in capability, opportunity and motivation between parents and CYP, with parents over-estimating the psychological capability of CYP to engage outdoors. The preference data indicate that active travel is the favoured mode of transport, with both CYP and parents stating that they would increase travel time in order to travel actively. While this response is not consistent with respondent's day-to-day travel choices, it suggests that the limitations to active travel may be psychological capability and automatic motivation, rather than a lack of opportunity. |
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| College: |
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences |
| Funders: |
Welsh Crucible |
| Issue: |
10 |
| Start Page: |
e0311498 |