Perceived or Objective accessibility to physical activity facilities? An exploration of predictors of physical activity via a meta-analytic SEM

There is an urgent need to understand factors that promote physical activities (PA) because it is one of the “easy” modifiable risk factors for global mortality (Bull et al., 2020). Systematic reviews support positive relations between PA and different environmental characteristics (e.g., Choi et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2019). One of the most studied characteristics of the physical environment is the accessibility to recreational/PA facilities. Both objective or subjective measures of accessibility to PA facilities are associated with PA (Borena et al., 2020; Hoehner et al., 2005). We reviewed the literature to verify, using a meta-analytic structural equation model, the hypothesis that the relationship between objective environment’s characteristics and PA could be mediated by how that characteristic is perceived (Orstad et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2019). We found eight studies that have investigated objective and perceived accessibility to PA facilities. Meta-SEM was conducted on the five studies with sufficient available data. Results suggest a significant predictive effect of the objective accessibility to facilities on PA’s behavior (beta = .15) and on the perceived measure (beta = .10), but the indirect effect was not significant. No significant effect was found for the perceived measure on PA. The fact that objective, but not the perceived environment, was associated with PA suggests that individuals’ level of awareness about their environments may have played a role. This prompts a need to create awareness campaigns, especially amongst subgroups that are more likely to misestimate perceptions (Ball et al., 2008).