The physical environment and older adults’ physical activity: experiments using photographs on the conscious and unconscious choice of where to be physically active

There is an urgent need to promote physical activity (PA) in the growing population of older adults as 60-70% of this age group is insufficiently active to maintain good physical and mental health. An efficient strategy that can promote PA in a large group of older adults is making environments more inviting to walk. However, knowledge on how to design environments that optimally invite older adults to walk is limited. Moreover, previous research assumes that people consciously reflect upon being physically active or not. As many of everyday human actions are unconscious, automatic or spontaneous important information might be missed. This project presents three studies: (1) an explorative, (2) a descriptive and (3) an experimental study. These studies respectively aim: (1) to explore environmental influences on walking in older adults, (2) to identify key environmental characteristics related to walking and (3) to investigate the causal effects of changes in these key characteristics on walking.
These studies are based upon novel methods using (manipulation of) photographs and choicereaction time tasks. This allows us to investigate and compare the influence of (combinations of) micro-scale environmental characteristics on the conscious and unconscious choice to walk in male vs. female and physically active vs. inactive older adults.
This project is anticipated to provide valuable insights into the environment-PA relationship which can be crucial for intervention development.