Study on the Impact of the Objective Characteristics and Subjective Perception of the Built Environment on Residents’ Physical Activities in Fuzhou, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Ref. sustainability-658683. “Study on the Impact of the Objective Characteristics and Subjective Perception of Community Built Environment on Residents' Physical Activities in Fuzhou”
The following comments are present in order to contribute to the paper strengthening:
The paper deals with a relevant subject. The idea is solid and clear, and the methodology is well established. The data treatment of the variables is well achieved, reaching clear conclusions.
It is suggested to analyze the influence of contextual aspects on the perceptual evaluation variables. The context (expectations, previous experiences, place-person interaction, etc.) influences the perception processes... Under this approach, it is possible to obtain different results depending on the places where the studies are carried out (that is, according to culture and practices developed).
It is important to consider other contextual aspects, i.g. does the city studied have seasons? What was the weather when the studies were conducted? Was summer? These contextual variables of the place might affect the paper results.
It is suggested to analyze whether there is a difference between the results of residents and non-residents. The previous experiences of the people, their familiarity with the place, the expectations and in general the person-place interaction might to condition the people behavior (in this case the behavior is related with the physical activities) and to impact the results.
In general, it is suggested to strengthen the description of the spaces studied and strengthen the contextual analysis considering perceptual aspects.
More specific comments are presented below:
Abstract
It is recommended to include an introductory phrase to the problem studied in the paper.
What does the acronym Poi mean?
Indicate the country of the city studied.
Keywords: improve the keywords to indicate the principal elements developed in the paper (do you really want to include an acronym as a keyword?)
Introduction.
It is recommended to update the information related to the deterioration of health (10 years can be a large window) (Line 37)
Improve the wording (lines 43-45).
Please check if the term Scholars is normally used in the academic context (lines 44, line 46).
Improve the wording (line 57)
It is necessary to present more clearly the need to develop this work (Lines 49-61)
It is recommended to rewrite paragraphs two and three on page 2 (lines 49-78). Review the continuity between these two paragraphs.
It is recommended to include a paragraph at the end of the introduction that summarizes the problem found, the paper objective, the scope and the variables that will be treated and observed.
It is recommended to include in the study an approach from environmental experience models (which are based on the field of social psychology). Under this approach exist a relationship between the place, the person and the activity. Each one of the three elements have contextual aspects that impact the perception process, the cognition and meaning of the place, impacting both attitudes (short-term responses) and behaviors (long-term outputs as physical activity or permanence times). This would explain for example why different studies have different degrees of influence between safety variables and activities carried out in the place. For a general framework of environmental experience, see “Handbook of Research on Perception-Driven Approaches to Urban Assessment and Design” or specific works by Herranz-Pascual. She works principally on processes of sound perception in the city, but present the framework general to work under this perspective.
Data Sources Variable Analysis and Model ConstructionSection 2.1 It is necessary to describe the general surveys structure.
Table 1, the layout is unclear, it is suggested to organize the information so that readers have better access to it. The data presented in column 3 cannot be analyzed easily. The labels in the table should be more precise (in column 2 variable income include the currency)
Section 2.2. Please indicate the specific method used in orthogonal rotation (line 175-176)
The data in table 1 indicate that there is a significant number of the sample of non-residents. Might this impact the results? Previous works indicate that the expectations between visitors and residents are different and therefore the behaviors (activities) will be different. Please be careful with this variable.
Section 2.3. The lines 185 to 188 are important, note that it is only in this page (the page number seven!) that the article object is clearly and concisely mentioned. I recommend improving this aspect in the introduction.
Please remember that the paper will be reader by people, and they need a clear methodology to replicate the experiments. In this way, please provide more details in this section.
Result Analysis.It is suggested to improve the discussion, contrasting and analyzing the results obtained with the results of the different previous works (the paper only compare the results with the paper made in North America).
It is necessary to reference the figure 3 (model 1) in the text.
Table 4, please be more careful with the presentation of it (it is not easy to read).
This section might be better if is considered and analyzed contextual aspects.
ConclusionsLines 304 to 306 are important, but I recommend locating them in some section related to the method and places under study (this latter does not exist).
It is necessary made a places description, at least a mention of their generalities, their construction year, etc. It is important to give the reader place information, so that he knows some characteristics of the studied city. This information is important because exist a relationship between the people and the places, which generates familiarity, expectations, previous experiences that make a person perform certain activities (and have different behaviors), this might impact the results...
It is suggested that the conclusions present the importance of the results obtained in environmental management and design processes or another fields.
Best regards,
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Abstract
Point 1: It is recommended to include an introductory phrase to the problem studied in the paper.
Response 1:I add the following at the beginning of the abstract. ‘Many scholars had confirmed that there was a correlation between the built environment and physical activity. However, most of the studies were based on the objective characteristics of the built environment, and seldom involved the residents' subjective perception.’ (Lines 14-16)
Point 2: What does the acronym Poi mean?
Response 2: POI is an abbreviation of “Point of Interest.”I added this explanation in the abstract. (Line 18)
Point 3: Indicate the country of the city studied.
Response 3: Our research city is in China. I added this information in the abstract.
Keywords
Point 4: improve the keywords to indicate the principal elements developed in the paper (do you really want to include an acronym as a keyword?)
Response 4: I revised the keyword ‘MVPA’ to ‘moderate to vigorous physical activity’ . (Line 33)
Introduction
Point 5: It is recommended to update the information related to the deterioration of health (10 years can be a large window) (Line 37)
Response 5:
I have updated the information that the World Health Organization released the top 10 threats to human health in 2019.(Lines 40-42)
Point 6: Improve the wording (lines 43-45).
Response 6: I have revised this passage and deleted the sentence. (Lines 48-60)
Point 7: Please check if the term Scholars is normally used in the academic context (lines 44, line 46).
Response 7: I deleted this sentence, but the other ‘scholar’ in the article was revised to ‘researchers’. (Lines 14,78)
Point 8: Improve the wording (line 57)
Response 8: I revised the content.(Lines 48-124)
Point 9: It is necessary to present more clearly the need to develop this work (Lines 49-61)
Response 9: I revised the content of literature review(lines 48-124). The revision of literature review was mainly from the impact of objective characteristics, subjective perception, destination accessibility and safety perception of built environment on physical activity. The direction of literature review was mainly from research content.
Point 10: It is recommended to rewrite paragraphs two and three on page 2 (lines 49-78). Review the continuity between these two paragraphs.
Response 10: I revised the content of literature review(lines 48-124). The revision of literature review was mainly from the impact of objective characteristics, subjective perception, destination accessibility and safety perception of built environment on physical activity. The direction of literature review was mainly from research content.
Point 11: It is recommended to include a paragraph at the end of the introduction that summarizes the problem found, the paper objective, the scope and the variables that will be treated and observed.
Response 11: At the end of the introduction, I added a summary, briefly describing the problems found, the data and methods used in the research and the objectives of the paper. (Lines 340-350)
Point 12: It is recommended to include in the study an approach from environmental experience models (which are based on the field of social psychology). Under this approach exist a relationship between the place, the person and the activity. Each one of the three elements have contextual aspects that impact the perception process, the cognition and meaning of the place, impacting both attitudes (short-term responses) and behaviors (long-term outputs as physical activity or permanence times). This would explain for example why different studies have different degrees of influence between safety variables and activities carried out in the place. For a general framework of environmental experience, see “Handbook of Research on Perception-Driven Approaches to Urban Assessment and Design” or specific works by Herranz-Pascual. She works principally on processes of sound perception in the city, but present the framework general to work under this perspective.
Response 12: I downloaded the articles you recommended, and studied them. On this basis, I read some references and revised my article. Limited to the length of the article, I briefly elaborated the theoretical basis of my research.(Lines 61-71)
Data Sources Variable Analysis and Model Construction
Point 13: Section 2.1 It is necessary to describe the general surveys structure.
Response13: I added a description of the data structure ‘Among the respondents, 60.7% were male and 39.9% were female; 64.83% were married and 35.17% were unmarried; 61.01% were registered in Fuzhou and 38.99% were not registered in Fuzhou. In the income level, the number of people with 4000-8000 yuan per month was the largest, accounting for 42.66%. In the education levels, undergraduate education was the most, accounting for 56.73%. ’(Lines 137-141)
Point 14: Table 1, the layout is unclear, it is suggested to organize the information so that readers have better access to it. The data presented in column 3 cannot be analyzed easily. The labels in the table should be more precise (in column 2 variable income include the currency)
Response 14: I removed the total number of samples to make the third column clearer. I revised the expression of income in the table. (Table 1)
Point 15: Section 2.2. Please indicate the specific method used in orthogonal rotation (line 175-176)
Response 15: I used the maximum variance method for orthogonal rotation .
Point 16: The data in table 1 indicate that there is a significant number of the sample of non-residents. Might this impact the results? Previous works indicate that the expectations between visitors and residents are different and therefore the behaviors (activities) will be different. Please be careful with this variable.
Response 16: The household registration system is a characteristic of China. However, due to the rapid development of China, the scope of population flow was relatively large. Many people work and live in this city, but they don't have a registered permanent residence in this city. We call them a non registered resident of Fuzhou. These people are not tourists. Maybe these two kinds of people have different requirements for urban built environment, but this paper does not conduct in-depth study on this issue.
Point 17: Section 2.3. The lines 185 to 188 are important, note that it is only in this page (the page number seven!) that the article object is clearly and concisely mentioned. I recommend improving this aspect in the introduction.
Response 17: I added a conclusion to the introduction of the article, in which I mentioned the research methods.(Lines 207-210)
Point 18: Please remember that the paper will be reader by people, and they need a clear methodology to replicate the experiments. In this way, please provide more details in this section.
Response 18: This study mainly discussed the influence of objective characteristics, subjective perception, safety perception of the built environment and physical activity through constructing structural equation model. Through carding the theory of literature review, the research established the hypothesis relationship between the various elements. After data collection, SPSS software was used for data processing and statistics, and Amos software was used for calculating structural equation model. The calculated data results were used to analyze the relationship between the various elements.
Result Analysis.
Point 19: Lines 304 to 306 are important, but I recommend locating them in some section related to the method and places under study (this latter does not exist).
Response 19: I adjusted this part to 2.1 Data Sources.
Point 20: It is necessary made a places description, at least a mention of their generalities, their construction year, etc. It is important to give the reader place information, so that he knows some characteristics of the studied city. This information is important because exist a relationship between the people and the places, which generates familiarity, expectations, previous experiences that make a person perform certain activities (and have different behaviors), this might impact the results...
Response 20: I added the introduction of research city in 2.1 Data Sources.(Lines 132-134)
.
Point 21: It is suggested that the conclusions present the importance of the results obtained in environmental management and design processes or another fields.
Response 21: I added this part:‘To sum up, urban planners should not only consider the standardization of material elements, but also pay attention to the subjective perception of people when they design the built environment. City managers should not only pay attention to the supply of sports venues, but also constantly improve the beauty, lighting, cleanliness and other environmental maintenance of the facilities in the community. The urban environment should better meet the needs of all levels of physical exercise, so that they can share the construction results of a healthy city.’(Lines 345-350)
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review your work. Please see the suggested comments.
Lines 35-40: These health issues are not new 21st century. It has been problem since 20th century.
Line 49, 52: foreign countries? foreign scholars? Did you mean western countries/scholars? This is very unconventional way to summarized other studies. You might want to rephrase it.
Lines 49-113: it seems authors tried to identify the relationships physical activities and various environmental factors. It should be reorganized by the factors not references since author recognized some of common factors such as level of land use mix, proximity to open space, walkability, and so on. Following paper might be helpful regarding relevant literature and structure: Noh, S. (2018). Assessing Active Living Potential: Case Study of Jacksonville, Florida. Urban Science., 2(2), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci2020044
Line 113: Before moving Data and Model, where is a research question? What is the purpose of this study at Introduction?
Lines 116-117: it would be better to have a description about why you select this case study area.
Table 1: it would be better to change orientation of this page. It is difficult to read.
Figure 1: the map is not legible. Also, it might be better to have other spatial data in the map such as POIs.
Table 3: Entropy Index calculation was performed by using SPSS as well?
Line 301: The authors should mention some of discussion points. Did this study answer the research question? How did it work? And any other challenges? From there, it is possible to find some of limitations of this study and suggest future studies.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: Lines 35-40: These health issues are not new 21st century. It has been problem since 20thcentury.
Response 1: I revised the time from the 21st century to the 20th century. (Lines 40-42)
Point 2: Line 49, 52: foreign countries? foreign scholars? Did you mean western countries/scholars? This is very unconventional way to summarized other studies. You might want to rephrase it.
Response 2: I meant western countries/scholars. My expression was not rigorous enough. I revised it in the article.
Point 3: Lines 49-113: it seems authors tried to identify the relationships physical activities and various environmental factors. It should be reorganized by the factors not references since author recognized some of common factors such as level of land use mix, proximity to open space, walkability, and so on. Following paper might be helpful regarding relevant literature and structure: Noh, S. (2018). Assessing Active Living Potential: Case Study of Jacksonville, Florida. Urban Science., 2(2), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci2020044
Response 3: I downloaded this article, read it and study it. And then I revised the content of literature review. The revision of literature review was mainly from the impact of objective characteristics, subjective perception, destination accessibility and safety perception of built environment on physical activity. The direction of literature review was mainly from research content.(Lines 48-124)
Point 4: Line 113: Before moving Data and Model, where is a research question? What is the purpose of this study at Introduction?
Response 4: At the end of the introduction, I added a summary, briefly describing the problems found, the data and methods used in the research and the objectives of the paper.
(Lines 116-124)
Point 5: Lines 116-117: it would be better to have a description about why you select this case study area.
Response 5: I added the introduction of research city in 2.1 Data Sources. (Lines 127-129)
Point 6: Table 1: it would be better to change orientation of this page. It is difficult to read.
Response 6: I removed the total number of samples to make the third column clearer. I revised the expression of income in the table. (Table 1)
Point 7: Figure 1: the map is not legible. Also, it might be better to have other spatial data in the map such as POIs.
Response 7: I have revised figure 1. New pictures are clearer.
Point 8: Table 3: Entropy Index calculation was performed by using SPSS as well?
Response 8: The calculation of entropy index was based on the formula EI=∑Si×ln(1/Si). This can be calculated by Excel software.
Point 9: Line 301: The authors should mention some of discussion points. Did this study answer the research question? How did it work? And any other challenges? From there, it is possible to find some of limitations of this study and suggest future studies.
Response 9: I revised the conclusion of the article. The conclusion part mainly discussed the problems of the article research. At the same time, the existing problems and research directions in the future were put forward.(Lines 340-365)
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
1. General considerations
The article explores a relationship of great interest for urban space planning and design: the relationship between the subjective and objective characteristics of the built environment and the physical activity at the community scale.
In the introduction the authors state that 'The study of urban built environment was carried out earlier in foreign countries. For the 49 measurement of urban built environment, most of them were based on the 3D and 5D frameworks proposed by foreign scholars, and objectively measure urban built environment from Density, Diversity, Design, Destination, and Distance (Cervero, R.et al. 1997; Ewing, R. et al., 2010). That's true. But I think it is necessary to refer to urban thermal comfort as an important variable in the study of the objective characteristics of the built environment. In this context I advise the reading and reference of:
Santos T., Silva C., Tenedório J.A. (2019) Promoting Citizens’ Quality of Life Through Green Urban Planning. In: Ragia L., Laurini R., Rocha J. (eds) Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management. GISTAM 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 936. Springer, Cham, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06010-7_10
and
Santos, T., Tenedório, J.A., Gonçalves, J.A.: Quantifying the city’s green area potential gain using remote sensing data. Sustainability 8(12), 1247 (2016). https://doi.org/10.3390/su8121247
At the end of the introduction, a summary of the authors' opinion on the impact of the objective characteristics and subjective perception of the community built environment on residents' physical activities should be made.
Section 2.3. (Structural Equation Model) Theoretical reference should be made to Structural equation and Structural equation modeling.
In “4. Conclusions and Suggestions” the conclusions are presented for Fuzhou case study. To what extent is the method replicable to other cities and what other conclusions are possible? This aspect should be debated.
2. Specific Considerations
Specific considerations are in the annotated pdf.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Point 1: In the introduction the authors state that 'The study of urban built environment was carried out earlier in foreign countries. For the 49 measurement of urban built environment, most of them were based on the 3D and 5D frameworks proposed by foreign scholars, and objectively measure urban built environment from Density, Diversity, Design, Destination, and Distance (Cervero, R.et al. 1997; Ewing, R. et al., 2010). That's true. But I think it is necessary to refer to urban thermal comfort as an important variable in the study of the objective characteristics of the built environment. In this context I advise the reading and reference of:
Santos T., Silva C., Tenedório J.A. (2019) Promoting Citizens’ Quality of Life Through Green Urban Planning. In: Ragia L., Laurini R., Rocha J. (eds) Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management. GISTAM 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 936. Springer, Cham, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06010-7_10
and
Santos, T., Tenedório, J.A., Gonçalves, J.A.: Quantifying the city’s green area potential gain using remote sensing data. Sustainability 8(12), 1247 (2016). https://doi.org/10.3390/su8121247
Response 1: I downloaded the two documents you provided and read them. Urban thermal comfort should be an important factor for physical activity. However, the influence of thermal comfort in different seasons on physical activity was not considered in the early stage of data collection. Therefore, this study can not add this part temporarily. I also pointed out in the conclusion that this was the limitation of my research. I think it will add this part to my later research.(Lines 361-362)
Point 2: Section 2.3. (Structural Equation Model) Theoretical reference should be made to Structural equation and Structural equation modeling.
Response 2: I revised the literature review. In the literature review, the theoretical support content of structural equation model was described. (Lines 48-124)
Point 3: In “4. Conclusions and Suggestions” the conclusions are presented for Fuzhou case study. To what extent is the method replicable to other cities and what other conclusions are possible? This aspect should be debated.
Response 3: I revised the conclusion of the article. The conclusion part mainly discussed the problems of the article research. The results of this study can be used for reference for cities with similar scale and climate as Fuzhou. But cities that are too cold, too large or too small may have some differences. (Lines 340-350)
Point 4: Line 14: Is it really necessary to mention the software?
Response 4: I hoped that I can explain the research methods more clearly by writing research software. I understood It's not necessary, but it can be choose whether to mention it or not.
Point 5: Line 57-59, clarify the sentence.
Response 5: I made an overall revision to lines 49-113. I revised the content and expression.(Lines 48-124)
Point 6: Line 118, what was the statistical population and sampling fraction?
Response 6: The statistical sample was the population of central urban area in Fuzhou City. We conducted random sampling by network in Fuzhou City according to the partition proportion of the sixth population census in China.
Point 7: Line 178-road network density, How was it calculated?
Response 7: Road network density was calculated by the length of road in buffer divided by the buffer area.
Point 8: Line 192, Please clarify.
Response 8: ‘I added a simple description of the structural equation modeling, and the model was shown in Figure 2. (Lines 207-210)
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for considering my previous comments and suggestions.
Your responses and revised version help to make better manuscript than before.
Here are some more suggestions/comments regarding revised version:
Lines 49-51: as far as I understanding, yes Jane Jacobs (it is proper called by last name not first name though) is famous and influential in urban planning, but her study is not the only reason to have more research regarding physical activity and built environment. You might want to revise these sentences to show more comprehensive and inclusive literature review of your study.
Lines 116-118: this would be a research question. You have provided some justifications to reach this question. I suggest not start with “We hope”. Please revise this sentence to have clear research question of you research.
Line 127-132: Still there is no mention why you select this case study area. Data availability and accessibility might be one reason for that.
Figure 1: Still not legible from my ends. Is this figure necessary to carry out your paper? If this it irrelevant you don’t need to keep it in the manuscript.
Conclusions and Suggestions: It might be better “Discussions and Conclusions”. Once you have your research question, please address 1) Did this study answer the research question? 2) How did it work?
References: You might want to check with Journal’s editorial office since your reference format looks not MDPI format.
The manuscript needs some professional editing of English language and style.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
