Moderation Effects of Streetscape Perceptions on the Associations Between Accessibility, Land Use Mix, and Bike-Sharing Use: Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background

Cycling is known to be beneficial for human health. Studies have suggested significant associations of physical activity with macroscale built environments and streetscapes. However, whether good streetscapes can amplify the benefits of a favorable built environment on physical activity remains unknown.

Objective

This study examines whether streetscape perceptions can modify the associations between accessibility, land use mix, and bike-sharing use.

Methods

This cross-sectional study used data from 18,019,266 bike-sharing orders during weekends in Shanghai, China. A 500 × 500 m grid was selected as the analysis unit to allocate data. Bike-sharing use was defined as the number of bike-sharing origins. Street view images and a human-machine adversarial scoring framework were combined to evaluate lively, safety, and wealthy perceptions. Negative binomial regression was developed to examine the independent effects of the three perceptual factors in both the univariate model and fully adjusted model, controlling for population density, average building height, distance to nearest transit, number of bus stations, number of points of interest, distance to the nearest park, and distance to the central business district. The moderation effect was then investigated through the interaction term between streetscape perception and accessibility and land use mix, based on the fully adjusted model. We also tested whether the findings of streetscape moderation effects are robust when examinations are performed at different geographic scales, using a small-sample statistics approach and different operationalizations of land use mix and accessibility.

Results

High levels of lively, safety, and wealthy perceptions were correlated with more bike-sharing activities. There were negative effects for the interactions between the land use Herfindahl-Hirschman index with the lively perception (β=–0.63; P=.01) and safety perception (β=–0.52; P=.001). The interaction between the lively perception and road intersection density was positively associated with the number of bike-sharing uses (β=0.43; P=.08). Among these, the lively perception showed the greatest independent effect (β=1.29; P<.001), followed by the safety perception (β=1.22; P=.001) and wealthy perception (β=0.72; P=.001). The findings were robust in the three sensitivity analyses.

Conclusions

A safer and livelier streetscape can enhance the benefits of land use mix in promoting bike-sharing use, with a safer streetscape also intensifying the effect of accessibility. Interventions focused on streetscape perceptions can encourage cycling behavior and enhance the benefits of accessibility and land use mix. This study also contributes to the literature on potential moderators of built environment healthy behavior associations from the perspective of microscale environmental perceptions.