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