Urban park accessibility and the mental health of older adults: a case study of Haidian District, Beijing

ABSTRACT

Urban parks benefit the mental health of older adults by providing outdoor leisure space. However, the potential impact of spatial accessibility to urban parks on older adults’ mental health was under-researched, particularly in regard to various spatial scales and transport modes. Using linear mixed models, this study assessed the association between spatial accessibility to urban parks and two typical mental health issues of older adults (i.e. depression and anxiety) based on a mental health survey among 1,231 older adults in Beijing, China. Spatial accessibility of each community to parks via walking and public transport modes at local, regional, and global scales was calculated based on travel time by application programming interface of online map. Results show that the spatial accessibility of urban parks at all three scales and with different transport modes had a significant impact on older adults’ anxiety; accessibility at the regional scale had the greatest impact. Older adults’ depression was affected primarily by regional park accessibility in walking mode. Findings have important practical implications for spatial-accessibility improvements to urban parks and for constructing age-friendly urban spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban park accessibility
• transport mode
• depression and anxiety
• spatial scale
• older adult
• mental health

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The research is supported by The National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFB0505004), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41830645, 42001159).

Notes on contributors

Pengfei Zhao

Pengfei Zhao is a Ph.D. candidate at Spatio-temporal Social Sensing Lab, Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems, Peking University. His main research interests are big data analysis on tourism research.

Zixuan Zhao

Zixuan Zhao is a master student at School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China

Cong Liao

Cong Liao is a postdoctoral research fellow at Institute of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems, Peking University.

Yan Fang

Yan Fang is an assistant professor at school of Leisure Sports and Tourism, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, 100084, China

Yu Liu

Yu Liu is a professor in Institution of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems, Peking University. His research focuses on big geo-data analyses and the applications for social science.