The Impact Of Park Green Space On Adult Obesity

With the rapid development of social economy in recent years,people’s material living conditions have become more and more abundant and the occurrence of obesity has become more and more common among adults.In order to alleviate the spread of obesity and reduce the medical burden,this paper uses panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey to conduct research and obtains a nationally representative estimation result.By using a twoway fixed-effects model combined with instrumental variable research methods,we found that the area of urban park green space per capita has a significant negative impact on adult’s BMI and the probability of being overweight.It proves that green space has obvious benefits for public health.The results of analysis for sub-sample provided evidence of heterogeneity.First of all,men’s weight was more easily influenced by urban park green space.The effect of park green space on women’s weight is small.That is because there exits unobservable factors such as social values and aesthetic orientation that affect women’s weight.Secondly,because the time schedule of residents is more subjectively affected by individuals and the majority of unemployed people are not willing to use green space for exercise,the impact of park green space on unemployed people’s weight is lower.Employed people can benefit more from park green space to lose weight.At the same time,because the physiological reasons of the elderly’s slow metabolism and low energy consumption,the park green space doesn’t have significant effect on elderly people’s weight.As the main labor force in the society,young and middle-aged people have better body function and that make them reduce weight through park green space more efficiently.Finally,residents with high education levels can benefit more from park green space due to the good cognitive ability of them.Because the lack of health awareness and poor cognitive ability for lower education people,the impact of park green space on their weight is lower.In addition,the results of channel analysis show that the urban park green space per capita is positively related to residents’ preferences for outdoor activities.The increase of urban park green space per capita can increase the probability of participating in outdoor sports activities for residents,in this case,it can effectively help residents to lose weight.The research results in this article clarify the significance of park green space to prevent obesity and provide a new policy entry point for China to control obesity.