Environment, Design, and Obesity

Abstract

This article presents a framework for considering the relevance of the physical environment to obesity. The authors adopt the notion that the “environment” constitutes the space outside the person and therefore broaden the common conceptualization of the “environment” to encompass a full spectrum from small-scale design elements to large-scale community infrastructure. An energy balance approach is also adopted. The energy balance perspective recognizes the equilibrium of food consumption and energy expenditure, rather than focusing solely on one or the other side of the equation. The authors consider how environmental characteristics present either barriers (that hinder), or supports (that promote) healthy habits. Thus, they describe a range of obesity-related environmental themes that provide opportunities for innovative collaborative research between environmental psychologists and colleagues in fields ranging from apparel design to landscape architecture. Last, conceptual and methodological considerations are briefly presented.

Physical environmental correlates of childhood obesity: a systematic review

“…To further advance the field, features of the built and social environments might be combined with psychosocial variables to propose mediational models that can be tested to develop theories of how environment influences behavior (e.g., physical activity, dietary intake) and BMI/obesity (46-48). For example, self-efficacy, motivation, and social support mediated the effects of the physical environment on physical activity (49).…”

School gardens and physical activity: A randomized controlled trial of low-income elementary schools

“…Gardens are unique in their potential to affect both sides of the energy balance equation: dietary intake and physical activity (Hill and Peters, 1998;Wells et al, 2007), and yet relatively few studies have examined the effects of gardens on children's health or health behaviors. Moreover, the extant research on the topic of gardens and children's health has focused almost exclusively on the potential for gardens to impact children's diet-related outcomes such as fruit and vegetable consumption or fruit and vegetable preference (Christian et al, 2012(Christian et al, , 2014Lineberger and Zajicek, 2000;Morris et al, 2001, Robinson-O'Brien et al, 2009, while studies of gardens' effects on children's PA are rare (Hermann et al, 2006;Phelps et al, 2010).…”

Which environmental factors most strongly influence a street’s appeal for bicycle transport among adults? A conjoint study using manipulated photographs

“…The validity of color photos in comparison to on-site responses has already been proven in previous studies [54, 55]. Furthermore, respondents who judge photographs do not have to recall features of the physical environment (as is the case when using questionnaires), which improves the reliability of the results.…”

“…Since these photograph experiments control for co-variation (i.e. environmental factors that co-occur), this approach overpowers previous studies by allowing the researcher to differentiate the separate influence of each environmental factor under controlled conditions [55]. This methodology using manipulated photographs results from previous research with non-manipulated photographs [35] and was tested in a recent mixed-method pilot study investigating the effect of a limited number of key micro-environmental factors and the street’s appeal for adults’ bicycle transport [48].…”