Identify travel and health factors influencing well-being of the older adults–a case study in China

Frontiers in Public Health

Public Health

Yongfeng Ma¹  Hongcheng Meng¹  Muhammad Zubair¹  Qian Zhu¹  Yi Zhu¹  Shuyan Chen¹ 

[1] Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing, China;Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modem Urban Traffic Technologies, Southeast University, Nanjing, China;

关键词: older adults;    travel well-being;    embedded feature selection;    Gini index;    transportation mobility;    accessibility;    relative importance;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpubh.2023.1213499

 received in 2023-04-28, accepted in 2023-07-03,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

ObjectiveWith the increase in aging populations worldwide, the travel well-being of the elders has gained attention. The objective of this study is to examine the nonlinear relationships between the well-being of the older people in China and factors associated with travel and health.MethodBased on the data collected in China, combined embedded feature selection and decision tree built by Gini index were utilized to screen for influential factors and to determine the importance of the features selected. Tamhane’s T2 was used to study the differences in the important factors among older people with different levels of travel well-being.ResultsThis study found that the travel well-being of older adults depends mainly on accessibility to public places, such as schools and medical facilities, and the availability of bus services. Out of expectation, the most important influential factor of travel well-being of older people is the distance from home to high school. This is related to the traditional Chinese concept of education. In addition, it was found that the body mass index is more important than self-perceived health as an influence factor of travel well-being of the elders in China. Social skills are important factors too.ConclusionThis study investigated various health-related and travel-related factors and their impacts on the travel well-being of older adults Chinese with the overall goal to improve the quality of life of the elders in China. The findings may provide a theoretical basis for the implementation of various transportation management and urban planning and design -related policies to improve the travel well-being of older adults in China.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Zhu, Zhu, Ma, Chen, Meng and Zubair.