Research On Impacts Of Street Environment On Physical Activity Of The Elderly From The Perspective Of Social Ecology

The aging of population is a severe challenge that most cities in China are facing,which will bring huge economic burden to the society.Most old people are physically and mentally sub-health and how to improve their health has attracted wide attention from all walks of society.Social ecology is a comprehensive discipline based on sociology and ecology,which is widely used in the western developed countries for the analysis and research of the influencing factors on physical activity.Old people in our country are influenced by China's specific national conditions and social environment.The thesis will combine the characteristics of Chinese old people and comb social ecology theory that are suitable for old people to build the foundation for following study.The street,which is the main place for daily activities of old people and an essential part of urban public space,is closely related to the daily trip of old people.Research on the relationship between the street environment and physical activity of the aged has great significance to promote the physical activity of old people.The thesis choose 36 typical living streets in Nanshan district of Shenzhen as the research area.And obtain data from five aspects of street: comfort,aesthetic,accessibility,diversity,security;and get social attribute and cultural attribute data of street in the form of likert scale score through questionnaire.Meanwhile,the individual characteristics,social background of the elderly and the amount of physical activity in the street space were obtained through questionnaire survey.Finally,the thesis use SPSS correlation analysis,factor analysis and regression analysis to find specific factors that influence the number and the energy consumption level of old people.The results show that the three most important factors influencing the number of the elderly are: sidewalk features,street facilities features and social atmosphere of street.The factors that have the greatest influence on the level of physical activity are: the individual will,the influence of friends,the influence of family,the utility brought by physical activity,the social atmosphere of street,and landscape characteristics of street.Combined with the results of the data analysis,the thesis summarize suggestions to promote the physical activity behavior of the elderly and put forward direction of street space improvement,hope to provide reference for the future study of street space research.