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According to WHO and the United Nations Children's Fund, globally, about one in seven children are experiencing mental health problems. Because of their immaturity and psychological vulnerability, school-age children are highly susceptible to the impact of urban environments. As one of the most crucial components of urban mobility, the commuting-to-school environment is significantly influencing the emotions, behaviors, and cognition of school-age children due to the high frequency of utilization. This is particularly evident in cold region cities, where the impact of commuting-to-school environments on children's mental health is exacerbated by the effects of cold climates, lack of greenery, and safety threats posed by icy roads. On the one hand, it reduces the comfort and convenience of children's traveling, and on the other hand, the lack of outdoor activities deprives school-age children of exploration of the external environment, which is not conducive to their curiosity and creativity.
Existing research on children's commuting environments mainly focuses on being friendly with transportation travel mode choices and physical health, ignoring the importance of mental health. Therefore, this research centers on the factors and mechanisms that influence children's mental health in cold urban environments. The commuting-to-school environment refers to the external urban spaces in which school-age children travel to and from school, including the route between home and school, the surrounding natural landscape, and the social surroundings. Using the literature review, child-friendly questionnaire, and cognitive map as main method, we constructed a conceptual framework of the factors of cold urban commuting-to-school environment on school-age children's mental health based on 12 indicators in four dimensions: (1) safety, which includes transportation security, social security and environmental atmosphere. Since children are physically disadvantaged, their perception of environmental safety is more sensitive. Being in an unsafe environment can therefore have a disproportionate impact on their mental state. (2) Comfort, including road conditions, acoustic environment, and thermal environment. Children's walking process is more unstable compared to adults, and they are more sensitive to subtle changes in the surroundings; (3) Accessibility includes access to public transportation, and road connectivity and congestion. The accessibility promotes independent commuting for children, thereby reducing psychological burdens and increasing opportunities to socialize with their peers; (4) Diversity, including landscape diversity, activity space diversity, and traffic signage diversity. Interesting and multi-functional facilities can satisfy the curiosity of school-age children, thus stimulating the desire to explore.
In this research, data are collected and scored on 12 indicators of the commuting-to-school space for 147 children in four schools in Harbin City, and their mental health was evaluated in accordance with the questionnaire. Using multiple linear regression to fit children's mental health scores to data from 12 indicators across four dimensions of the commuting-to-school environment, we reached the following conclusions: (1) The comfort dimension has the greatest impact on children's emotional health, and the degree of congestion in accessibility is the influence factor that has the greatest impact on children's psychological well-being. (2) Safety has a greater impact on children's psychological well-being, with the social security factor being the most influential factor in this dimension in making children nervous and anxious. (3) Diversity does not have a significant impact on children's changes in mental status, which may be related to the lack of attention to the outside world when children are commuting.
In future research, we will expand the scope of data collection to optimize the model to better focus on the mental health needs of children who are disadvantaged in urban planning decisions, to make up for the neglect of mental health in the current research related to child-friendly cities, and to promote children's commuting mobility in cities.
References
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| Keywords | Commuting-to-school Environment; Child Friendly; Psychological Health；Cold Region Cities |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
