Applying a Treatment Effects Model to Investigate Public Amenity Effect on Physical Activity of the Elderly

ABSTRACT

The increasing elderly population puts significant health, economic, and social burdens on society. Physical activity is one of the most cost-effective ways to maintain the health of the elderly. This study adopts a treatment effects model to investigate the causal relationship between environment attributes and physical activity among the elderly, while taking endogeneity into account. The data were collected from 274 participants by face-to-face interviews in Taichung, Taiwan. Performing physical activity regularly in parks is the most important measure of the amount of physical activity by the elderly. Providing sufficient and accessible parks in metropolitan residential neighborhoods could be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote physical activity for the elderly living in midsize Asian cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Endogeneity
• geographic information system
• park
• physical activity
• treatment effects model

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Mr. Menghsuan Yang, MS, for data collection and analysis.

Funding

This project is supported by grant NSC 99-2410-H-260-071, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.

Notes

1. The official website can only be shown in Chinese: http://gazette.nat.gov.tw/EG_FileManager/eguploadpub/eg015133/ch02/type3/gov10/num3/Eg.htm.

2. Walking is one of the most popular forms of physical activity for the elderly in Taiwan, similar to many other countries. It is common for Taiwanese elderly to walk in parks for a few hours.

3. We performed a post hoc power analysis to calculate the observed power for our regression model (Cohen, 1988; Cohen, Cohen, West, & Aiken, 2003). The estimated power is very close to one (0.9999), suggesting that we have adequate sample size.

Additional information

Funding

This project is supported by grant NSC 99-2410-H-260-071, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.