Active transport, health, and environment (ASTHAIR)

CONTEXTE

Integrating active transportation in daily commute and routines can be the solution to increase physical activity and meet public health recommendations of physical activity. This solution does not only improve population health but also environmental and planetary health by reducing carbon emission and energy consumption. To promote active transportation,  individuals needs to be engaged and governmental stakeholders need to endorse active transportation policies. However, policymakers and decision-makers may come from different sectors with different goals and working language. These barriers needs to be assessed in order to find the right solution to improve active transportation policies. It is also important to understand peoples' opinion and the obstacles they face to be able to reduce barriers and encourage action.

OBJECTIFS

The main objective is to study people and governamental officials' opinions on perceived barriers to active transportation. The goal is to be able to show these data and trends in a way that is easy to understand and utilize it in policy planning and actions. This information will be used to plan for the development of a mobile application framework to promote active transportation, as a part of the ASTHAIR project. The other part of the ASTHAIR project is to perform a health impact assessment. This is to assess planned policies and their effects on health, as a "Health in All Policies" initiative. This project will focus on the population and governmental stakeholders of the city of Nice.

MÉTHODE

Concept mapping is a methodology that takes thoughts and ideas from various communities and visualizes it to be easily understood. The method uses a participatory approach trough GroupWisdom™ (social research platform that specializes in group concept mapping, with online data collection, analysis, and training).
Through the software, we create two sets of survey questionnaires, one for governmental stakeholders, and the other for population.
To reach the population of the study, we disseminate a brief online survey through Nice local newspaper and/or magazine ad post with a QR code. For the governmental stakeholders, an online survey is used as well, but sent directly to participants.
The research questions are:

• What are the needs and gaps, in motivation, access, and infrastructure (but not limited to), to switch to/to engage more in active transportation?
• Do their perceived needs and gaps differ by groups of stakeholders? (e.g. car drivers, active transport users, public transport users)
• What factors influence governmental stakeholders’ decision to support AT?
• Do these influential factors different between governmental sectors?

RESPONSABLES DU PROJET

Nuttanun Siriaporn, doctoral candidate in public health, sustainable transport, and environment, and Anne Vuillemin, university professor, are leading this research project within the LAMHESS laboratory at Université Côte d'Azur.

PARTENAIRES

• Laboratoire RETINES (Université Côte d'Azur)
• City of Nice

PARTENARIAT INTERNATIONAL

• Centre for environmental policy, Imperial College London (UNITED KINGDOM)