Assessing runners’ exposure to natural and built environments in the Netherlands: A descriptive assessment based on GPS tracking

ABSTRACT

Running is a convenient physical activity that has gained popularity. However, little is known about runners’ running environments and how they differ from their residential environments. To fill this gap, this study examines runners’ exposure to natural and built environments along their running routes and assesses the difference between running and residential environments. We collected running track data from Endmondo, a fitness data platform, and used it to determine runners’ residency. Moreover, we used open geographical data to calculate a range of environmental variables within their residential areas and along their running trajectories. We applied t-tests to assess differences across objectively measured environmental variables between urban and rural runners, considering geographic, temporal and track-specific strata. We found that the running environments of urban and rural runners were diverse and had distinct characteristics. The results suggest policies to promote running acknowledging these differences between running environments in urban and rural areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Built and natural environments
• running
• The Netherlands

Acknowledgements

This work was part of the Vitality Data Center, which is part of the Vitality Alliance funded by Utrecht University and Eindhoven University of Technology. This work was also carried out on the Dutch national e-infrastructure with the support of SURF Cooperative.

Disclosure statement

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

CRediT author statement

SZ: Formal analysis, Writing – Original Draft; ZW: Conceptualization, Data collection, Review & Editing; DE: Conceptualization, MH: Review & Editing; Methodology.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the SURFsara [40362].