Correlation Between Neighborhood Built Environment and Physical Activity Among Chinese Population: Major Factors, Key Findings, and Research Prospects

Physical inactivity poses growing threats to the Chinese population, associated with booming urbanization and unfriendly living environment in recent years. This paper is a systematic review to investigate the neighborhood built environment factors correlated with physical activity in the Chinese population, including children and adolescents, adults, and the elderly. The Web of Science has been searched for articles in English,and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure has been searched for articles in Chinese. A total of 35 articles published before January 2020 have been included in this review. Then these articles are studied with a focus on six major aspects-transportation, density, design, diversity, amenity, and walkability – finding that the neighborhood built environment factors related to physical activity vary across age groups and different types of neighborhoods. In the context of refined community governance, future research should make further explorations from aspects including different resident groups, local characteristics of neighborhoods, built environment characteristics, research design, and other relevant variables.