SummaryRegular physical activity reduces the risk of non-communicable diseases and protects against disease risk factors such as overweight and obesity. The nearby neighborhood environment’s characteristics play an important role by enabling people to be physically active. However, most studies focusing on environmental features for physical activity face the limitation of self-selection bias (also referred to as residential self-selection). People are not randomly distributed to neighborhoods, but their characteristics (i.e., high socioeconomic status) make them select neighborhoods with the facilities and resources that suit their preferred lifestyle or financial resources. The self-selection bias can make it difficult to differentiate the effect of neighborhood features on behavioral outcomes from the choice to be near features facilitating these preferred behaviors. The proposal will take the self-selection bias into account. We will focus on individuals moving houses between two NAKO assessments, allowing for a temporal ordering of exposure (built environment) and outcome (physical activity). Therefore, this approach (based on the area of relocation studies) allows for examining within-individual changes in environmental features and physical activity.

Keywords Neighborhood-environment Physical-activity Relocation Walkability

InstitutionsDeutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, Universität Regensburg, University of Birmingham, Helmholtz Zentrum München