Do neighbourhood characteristics matter in understanding school children’s active lifestyles? A cross-region multi-city comparison of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Many studies have explored the influence of individual and neighbourhood factors on active school travel (AST), this novel study is the first to examine how AST and formal extracurricular activities are associated with children’s active lifestyles. The aims of this study were to (a) create an active lifestyle variable (ALIFE) measured in terms of total weekly minutes of AST and extracurricular activities, and (b) explore how ALIFE is associated with different attributes at the individual, household and neighbourhood levels, and how these relationships differ for children aged 10 and 11 years old across the three cities: Glasgow, Edinburgh and Hong Kong. We found environmental factors to be important indicators of lower AST, for example greater parking facility density. The most substantial contribution to children’s overall ALIFE was household income, those from the lowest household group having almost 2 h less ALIFE per-week than those from the highest income.

KEYWORDS:

• After-school activities
• everyday life
• children
• inequality
• international

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

JO and NN are employed by the University of Glasgow and funded as part of the Places and Health Programme at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit (SPHSU) (Chief Scientist Office [grant number SPHSU10]; Medical Research Council [grant number MC_UU_12017/10]). This work was also supported by the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee Research Grants Council on ‘Understanding Children’s Independent Mobility and Their Road-crossing Ability: Challenges and Opportunities in Hong Kong' (HKU 17406314).