The association between walkability and personality: Evidence from a large socioecological study in Japan

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101438Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The link between walkability and personality is examined in a large Japanese sample.

  • Walkability positively predicts Extraversion above and beyond conservative controls.

  • The findings advance theory on the origins of geographical differences in personality.

Abstract

Geographical personality differences robustly predict diverse consequential outcomes. However, comparatively little is known about the factors that create such differences, in particular the role of the built environment. To bridge the gap, the present study used a socioecological approach to examine the relationship between walkability and personality. Walkability reflects the degree to which urban areas are easily walkable and accessible for pedestrians. As such it is considered a defining feature of people's living environments. We utilized a large sample from the Data Sharing for Psychology in Japan (DSPJ) project, which assessed the Big Five personality traits of 5141 Japanese residents. Walkability estimates were extracted from Walk Score, an established online platform, based on individuals' place of living. Building on prior research, we hypothesized that walkability would be positively linked to Agreeableness and Extraversion due to increased opportunities for social interactions and selective migration. Multiple regression analyses showed that walkability was positively related to Extraversion (B = 0.033; 95%CI [0.019, 0.047]; β = 0.066), but not to Agreeableness. This pattern persisted in the presence of a conservative set of individual and socioecological controls. Taken together, our research suggests that walkable urban environments may be conducive to a more animated and lively social climate which is reflected in heightened extraversion among residents of such areas. As such it advances psych-geographical theory and our understanding of the role of the built environment in the emergence of geographical personality differences.

Introduction

Ample evidence has shown that there are geographical personality differences within countries, e.g. at the level of regions (Allik et al., 2009; Buecker, Ebert, Götz, Entringer, & Luhmann, 2020; Rentfrow, 2010), cities (Bleidorn et al., 2016; Wei et al., 2017) and neighbourhoods (Jokela, 2020; Jokela, Bleidorn, Lamb, Gosling, & Rentfrow, 2015). Attesting to their real-world importance, geographical personality differences have been linked to diverse societally important outcomes, e.g., economic innovation, social capital, violent crime and health behaviours (Harrington & Gelfand, 2014, Lee, 2017, McCann, 2010; Rentfrow et al., 2013). Understanding how geographical personality differences emerge is thus key to inform theory and research (Rentfrow, 2020), as well as geographically-targeted policies and governance (Bleidorn et al., 2019). Therefore, scholars have investigated a suite of possible mechanisms, such as climate (van de Vliert, 2013; Wei et al., 2017), natural resources (Talhelm et al., 2014), and sociocultural legacies (Uchida et al., 2019). However, scarce attention has been paid to the impact of the built environment (Rentfrow & Jokela, 2017), despite it being theorised to be one of the primary determinants of spatial variation in personality (Oishi, 2015; Rentfrow, Gosling, & Potter, 2008).

One important characteristic of people's built environments is walkability, which captures the easiness with which people can live their daily lives on foot (Oishi, Koo, & Buttrick, 2018). Walkability is jointly determined by various physical characteristics of an area such as dwelling density, the number of intersections, diversity of land use and street connectivity (Frank et al., 2010). Residents of highly walkable areas are able to complete most of their everyday tasks by walking as all necessary stores and amenities can be reached by foot, whereas residents of less walkable areas rely on cars for most or all tasks.

The benefits that are offered by walkability can be sorted into two broad categories: On the one hand, walkability is related to indicators of physical health, e.g., more day-to-day walking (Saelens & Handy, 2008; Werner, Brown, & Gallimore, 2010), higher physical activity (Sallis et al., 2016; Ward Thompson, 2013), better overall health (Todd et al., 2016), lower obesity rates (Brown et al., 2009; Frank et al., 2006; Napier, Brown, Werner, & Gallimore, 2011) and increased life expectancy (Oishi et al., 2018). On the other hand, walkability is also associated with markers of psychological status, e.g. greater sense of belonging (Kim & Kaplan, 2004), higher neighbourhood satisfaction (Abass & Tucker, 2018; Hur & Morrow-Jones, 2008), higher well-being (Kinnafick & Thøgersen-Ntoumani, 2014), elevated upward social mobility (Oishi et al., 2018), lower depression (Koohsari et al., 2018a), decreased fear of crime (Foster, Knuiman, Wood, & Giles-Corti, 2013), and decreased fear of strangers (Foster et al., 2015). Taken together, walkability is an essential feature of humans’ living environments and an important determinant of their attractiveness and liveability (Forsyth, 2015; Lo, 2009) that is gaining traction in urban planning, geography and transportation research.

Adopting an individual-differences perspective, we argue that walkability is also likely to be related to the personality of the people who live in walkable areas. As mentioned above, residents of highly walkable areas tend to walk through their neighbourhood on a daily basis (Saelens & Handy, 2008; Werner et al., 2010). This might foster good relationships with neighbours as people would naturally have regular contact with each other and thus interact more frequently than in less walkable areas (Leyden, 2003; Lund, 2002). Decreased commuting time, easy access to venues, clubs and recreational places, high perceived safety and the fact that walkable communities are usually densely settled (Mazumdar, Learnihan, Cochrane, & Darvey, 2018) may additionally promote informal interactions, social capital and sense of community (Abass & Tucker, 2018; French et al., 2014).

Against this backdrop, according to theory in geographical psychology (Rentfrow, 2010; Rentfrow et al., 2008), there are at least three reasons why walkability might be associated with residents' personality: ecological influence, social influence and selective migration. Ecological influence holds that people's personality and in turn their typical behaviour is constrained and guided by the affordances and opportunities of their physical environment (Meagher, 2019). Thus, it appears reasonable to assume that over time walkability would foster residents' sociability, due to recurrent demands and opportunities for social interaction.

Social influence posits that certain behavioural tendencies such as community involvement, that are common in an area become local cultural norms and thus get further reinforced (Huggins & Thompson, 2019). Indeed, prior research suggests, that walkable neighbourhoods often harbour a distinct sociocultural climate of creativity and innovation (Florida, Mellander, & Stolarick, 2011), characterised by regular knowledge sharing, networking routines and habitual face-to-face communication (Adler, Florida, King, & Mellander, 2019), which are naturally facilitated by the structure of the built, walkable environment (Knudsen, Florida, Stolarick, & Gates, 2008).

Lastly, selective migration suggests that people with certain traits might be especially likely to move to walkable areas as such places may satisfy their psychological and physical needs and offer them a high person-environment-fit (Bleidorn et al., 2016; Götz, Ebert, & Rentfrow, 2018; Jokela, 2020; Jokela et al., 2015). Consistent with that, research has shown that in deciding where to live, people no longer focus exclusively on economic arguments but also consider a broad variety of lifestyle factors (Bishop & Cushing, 2008; Florida, 2014), including community aesthetics, urban amenities and opportunities for social interaction (Florida, Mellander, & Stolarick, 2011). Walkable, urban areas might therefore appear particularly attractive to highly sociable individuals, which are indeed more likely to move to such environments (Camperio Ciani et al., 2007; Jokela, Elovianio, Kivimäki & Keltikangas-Järvinen, 2008).

To the extent that the behavioural affordances and associated moving incentives of walkable areas can be translated into Big Five terms (Goldberg, 1990), we therefore hypothesize, that walkability is positively associated with Agreeableness and Extraversion as the most interpersonal and prosocial of the Big Five traits (McCrae & Costa, 1989). To test these hypotheses, we use data from a Japanese nationwide survey with 5320 participants. While we refrain from making any other a priori predictions, we adopt an exploratory approach to investigate the relationship between walkability and the remaining Big Five traits, i.e. Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness.

Section snippets

Dataset

We used data from the Data Sharing for Psychology in Japan (DSPJ) project (see https://osf.io/8gsu7/and Oshio, 2018). The DSPJ is a collaborative online data collection effort which has been conducted in January 2017 with ethical approval from institutional review boards at Waseda University (application number: 2016–254) and Kwansei Gakuin University (application number: 2016–52). Respondents were randomly selected from a larger pool hosted by Cross Marketing Inc (http://global.cross-m.co.jp/

Results

Descriptive statistics for all variables are exhibited in Table 1. In the current study, we employed a listwise deletion strategy, excluding every participant who failed to respond to any of the items used in our analyses. Our final sample encompassed 5141 Japanese residents (39.9% female) from all 47 Japanese prefectures. On average, participants were 49.9 years old (SD = 11.02) and age ranged from 18 to 71 years. The mean Walk Score of participants’ living environments was 64.7 (SD = 24.4). A

Discussion

Geographical personality differences robustly predict diverse societally important outcomes. Therefore, it is important to understand which factors drive them (Rentfrow, 2010). The present research sought to shed new light on this question, focusing on the understudied aspect of the built environment. Herein, we adopted a socioecological approach (Oishi, 2014; Stokols, 1992) to examine the relationship between walkability and Big Five personality traits. Measuring walkability through the Walk

Conclusions

Highlighting that the environments we live in affect our emotions, cognitions and behaviours (Oishi, 2014) socioecological research is quickly gaining momentum. Empirically investigating the theorised link between the built environment and humans' personalities (Rentfrow et al., 2008), we showed that walkability robustly predicts individual Extraversion. Although the effect of walkability was small, as is common in socioecological research (Bleidorn et al., 2016; Murray et al., 2005) its

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Friedrich M. Götz: Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Shinya Yoshino: Data curation, Formal analysis, Software, Validation, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Atsushi Oshio: Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Data curation, Resources, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.

Acknowledgements

This study used data from the Data-Sharing for Psychology in Japan (DSPJ) project, conducted by Atsushi Oshio (Waseda University), Asako Miura (Osaka University), Yuki Ueno (The University of Tokyo), and Tetsuya Kawamoto (The University of Tokyo). This project was supported by JPSP KAKENHI 25380893, Kwansei Gakuin University Joint Research Grant(B), JSPS KAKENHI 16J00972, JSPS KAKENHI 16J07940. Friedrich M. Götz was supported by doctoral scholarships of the Cambridge Trust and the Economic and

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