Residents’ preferences for neighborhood social, built, and digital environment interventions to promote physical activity

Cities are challenged by increases in chronic diseases, obesity, and sedentary lifestyles, and physical inactivity is a major contributor to these problems. Urban planning and design aims to ensure that all people have access to enabling environments and diverse opportunities to be physically active. However, knowledge about the preferences of citizens for interventions supporting physical activity is still limited. This study aims to measure the preferences of residents for new, still-to-be-implemented social, built, or digital environment interventions in their neighborhoods that support physical activity.
First, factors and interventions playing a role in creating active living environments were explored. Subsequently, an online questionnaire was conducted including a stated-choice experiment to predict preferences for possible (new) interventions to increase physical activity. The experiment asked respondents to choose several times between two packages of interventions, created based on an experimental design. The interventions included personal support and guidance from an exercise broker/sports coach, sports activity sharing via an app, age-appropriate activities in the neighborhood, availability of free public fitness equipment in public space, availability of free public sports facilities, access to a gym, and earning rewards per activity through an app. All interventions were defined at two levels (present vs not present).
325 inhabitants of Venlo, a medium-sized city in the Netherlands (70,000 inhabitants), participated in the survey. A Latent Class model was estimated on the data collected and indicated two segments with different preferences. The ‘no preference’ segment is more likely to choose no package of interventions and is characterized by inhabitants having more satisfaction with social support, safety, walkability, cycling paths, parks, and sports facilities in their neighborhood compared to the ‘preference’ segment. This latter segment includes more households with children or one person, and prefers personal support and guidance from an exercise broker or sports coach and the improved availability of free public fitness equipment. Moreover, both segments prefer to have access to a gym with a discount to make physical activity more accessible. Hence, urban planners and policymakers are advised to implement these interventions in the built environment to support a more physical active lifestyle.