Virtual reality assessment of walking in a modifiable urban environment: a feasibility and acceptability study.

Physical activity is known to be one of the most health-beneficial behaviors, and salutogenic design modifications to the built environment can facilitate increased physical activity. Unfortunately, it is not often clear in advance which environmental and urban design implementations will generate increases in activities such as walking, and which will have little impact or even reduce walking. The present study tested the feasibility and acceptability of a virtual reality (VR) model for pre-testing urban designs for their impact on walking. Using a wearable VR head-mounted display/computer, young adults (n = 40) walked freely through a large indoor gymnasium, simultaneously walking through a virtual model of an urban streetscape that was designed to be modifiable and allow for testing impacts on walking of various changes to the urban environment. The majority of participants found the experience to be acceptable: pleasant and nonaversive, and they walked freely through the VR model for approximately 20 min, on average. Using modifiable VR models to pre-test built-environment changes for their impacts on walking behavior appears to be a feasible and acceptable approach and worthy of continued research investigation.

Environmental Physical Activity Cues and Children's Active vs. Sedentary Recreation.

Physical activity (PA) benefits health, and intensive environmental modifications can increase children's PA. Research has not yet addressed if subtle environmental cues, such as posters depicting PA, increase child PA. In the current study, it was hypothesized that children exposed to active posters (vs. nature posters) would spend a larger proportion of free play time engaging with active toys (relative to sedentary toys). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions in which posters on a laboratory wall depicted 1. People being active, or 2. Nature scenes. Children aged 5-10 years (N = 175) could play with up to eight toys (four active, four sedentary) while parents completed study-related surveys. The proportion of playtime that was active was compared between groups. Poster type did not have a significant effect on proportion of active playtime. Previous environmental interventions that increase children's PA have done so through enhancing access to active opportunities, rather than via signage. It is possible that poster interventions such as this may not influence children's PA, or perhaps other types of cues would have been more effective. Future research should investigate subtle environmental cues that match both the target audience and the accessible PA options (e.g., posters depicting children playing with available active toys) and explore other low-investment environmental modifications to boost children's PA.