Measuring Individuals' Spatial Access to Healthy Foods by Incorporating Mobility, Time, and Mode: Activity Space Measures. Issue 2 (3rd April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Li, Jingjing; Kim, Changjoo
• Is Part Of: Professional geographer. Volume 70:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 198
• Page End: 208
• Publication Date: 2018-04-03
• Subjects: activity space measures -- healthy foods -- mobility -- spatial access -- transportation mode; 活动空间测量 -- 健康粮食 -- 移动 -- 空间取得管道 -- 运输模式。; medidas del espacio de actividad -- alimentos saludables -- movilidad -- acceso espacial -- modo de transporte; Geography -- Periodicals; 910
• DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2017.1338591
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0033-0124

Abstract

Abstract : Spatial access to healthy foods has drawn growing attention regarding the relationship with people's health conditions and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Individuals' differences and the impact of travel behaviors on food accessibility, however, are rarely studied. This study incorporates mobility, time, and transportation mode components to measure each individual's access to healthy foods. We employed three activity space measures to estimate food accessibility: route network buffer, time-weighted standard deviational ellipse (SDE), and mode-weighted SDE. Food accessibility in three activity spaces shows similar variabilities. Geographic size and spatial access to healthy foods differ significantly by income and employment for all three activity space measures. People with higher incomes and those who are currently employed are likely to have larger activity spaces and higher food accessibility. As age increases, people tend to increase their size of activity spaces (in both SDE measures) and food accessibility significantly. Females are likely to have smaller activity spaces and less accessibility to healthy foods (only in the time-weighted SDE measure). Geographic size and spatial access do not differ significantly by education and number of vehicles per household. Although three activity spaces are highly correlated in both geographic size and spatial access, differences still exist among them.