Static home-based versus dynamic mobility-based assessments of exposure to urban green space

There is growing interest in urban green space exposure estimated dynamically by accounting for individuals’ mobility during daily life. We aimed to explore if daily green space exposure estimates based on individuals’ mobility substantially differ from static home-based exposure estimates, and to examine potential effect modification by personal (sex and work status) and temporal (weekends versus weekdays) characteristics. To assess the association between daily exposure to urban green space, we used home address and time-activity data collected from 1911 participants in western New York, US, using their GPS-enabled mobile phones. We abstracted both individuals’ home address based (home-based) and daily time activity based (mobility-based) green space exposures from the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Then, we assessed the association between mobility-based and home-based exposure estimates using linear mixed effect regression models with subject-specific random effects. We also explored whether this effect was modified by individual-level characteristics, including work status and sex, as well as whether assessments took place on weekdays versus weekends. We found that daily dynamic exposure to urban green space based on individuals’ mobility was not substantially different from static exposure estimates based on one’s residence, but that there were statistically significant effect modifiers. Specifically, the correspondence between mobility-based and home-based exposure to green space was relatively lower for employed compared to unemployed participants, whereas their correspondence during weekends increased compared to weekdays. Our findings suggest that there is a strong correspondence between mobility-based and home-based exposure to urban green space, but that their associations are modified by personal and temporal characteristics. Further research is needed to confirm our finding for general population in other settings, such as different seasons and other regions.