Document Type
Article
Abstract
Perceptions of the neighbourhood environment can play an important role in promoting public health, yet modifying perceptions is challenging. Adjusting the built environment may be a pathway to influence perceptions. In addition to the physical environment, intrapersonal factors may shape perceptions. This study analysed data from several Japanese major cities to explore the association between objective and perceived neighbourhood environment attributes, stratified by age and gender. Perceived neighbourhood environment measures were adapted from established scales, while objective measures were derived from participants’ geographic address data. Multivariate linear regression was employed to assess these associations. All objective measures were positively associated with overall neighbourhood environment perception, and destination diversity presented the strongest association. Perceptions among those 65–69 were more strongly influenced by the physical environments of their neighbourhood, whether positively or negatively. Objective environmental measures have a greater positive impact on perception for females than for males, while males are more negatively affected in terms of perceptions of crime and traffic safety. These findings highlight how objective built environment attributes may shape residents’ perceptions across different demographic groups.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Scientific Reports, Volume 15, 2025, pages 30322-.
Rights
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
APA Citation
Li, J., Koohsari, M. J., Zhao, J., Kaczynski, A. T., McCormack, G. R., Oka, K., Nakaya, T., Tanimoto, R., Watanabe, R., & Tomoya Hanibuchi. (2025). The impact of objective urban features on perception of neighbourhood environments. Scientific Reports, 15, 30322. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-16108-z