Title:
Accessibility to urban parks and health outcomes at the neighborhood level

dc.contributor.advisor Watkins, Kari E.
dc.contributor.author Boyd, Nicholas
dc.contributor.committeeMember Taylor, John
dc.contributor.committeeMember Macfarlane, Gregory
dc.contributor.department Civil and Environmental Engineering
dc.date.accessioned 2019-08-21T13:50:26Z
dc.date.available 2019-08-21T13:50:26Z
dc.date.created 2018-08
dc.date.issued 2018-07-31
dc.date.submitted August 2018
dc.date.updated 2019-08-21T13:50:26Z
dc.description.abstract This research identifies the correlation between access to urban parks and physical activity and obesity outcomes at the neighborhood level. Using data for New York City, we created a new measure for access to parks called ‘park choice accessibility.’ Park choice accessibility uses a destination choice-derived framework to interact distance to parks and the quality of those parks as defined by their size and other potential amenities. A small park very close to a neighborhood can have an impact on health outcomes, but a larger park at a similar distance may have an even larger impact. Similarly, a large park can be further away and still have an impact on health outcomes. We assess whether park choice accessibility is associated with increased physical activity or decreased prevalence of obesity at the neighborhood level, controlling for spatially correlated and endogenous effects in addition to socioeconomic covariates such as age, marital status, income, and educational attainment. Our results suggest that there is no statistically significant relationship between park access and obesity prevalence. However, better park access is associated with a marginal increase in physical activity, suggesting that improving park access throughout cities may serve as a pathway toward achieving physical activity benchmarks.
dc.description.degree M.S.
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1853/61674
dc.language.iso en_US
dc.publisher Georgia Institute of Technology
dc.subject Park access
dc.subject Health outcomes
dc.subject Obesity prevalence
dc.subject Physical activity
dc.title Accessibility to urban parks and health outcomes at the neighborhood level
dc.type Text
dc.type.genre Thesis
dspace.entity.type Publication
local.contributor.advisor Watkins, Kari E.
local.contributor.corporatename School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
local.contributor.corporatename College of Engineering
relation.isAdvisorOfPublication fea089a9-d843-4c77-8b6d-408504b346e8
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication 88639fad-d3ae-4867-9e7a-7c9e6d2ecc7c
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication 7c022d60-21d5-497c-b552-95e489a06569
thesis.degree.level Masters
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
BOYD-THESIS-2018.pdf
Size:
1.29 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
3.87 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description: