BACKGROUND Little is known about how diet-related and activity-related amenities relate to residential location behaviour. Understanding these relationships is essential for addressing residential self-selection bias. METHODS Using 25 years (6 examinations) of data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study (n=11 013 observations) and linked neighbourhood-level d...

In hedonic valuation studies the policy-relevant environmental quality attribute of interest is often costly to measure, especially under pronounced spatial and temporal variability. However, in many cases this attribute affects home prices and consumer preferences solely through its impact on a readily observable, spatially delineated, and time-invariant feature of the physical landscape. We l...

BACKGROUND Given the documented physical activity disparities that exist among low-income minority communities and the increased focused on socio-ecological approaches to address physical inactivity, efforts aimed at understanding the built environment to support physical activity are needed. This community-based participatory research (CBPR) project investigates walking trails perceptions in a...

The U.S. population has been migrating to places with high perceived quality of life. With homothetic preferences, such migration can follow from the increased demand for amenities that accompanies broad-based technological progress. Under the baseline calibration of a general equilibrium model, a place with amenities for which individuals would initially pay five percent of their income grows ...

BACKGROUND Recently there has been growing interest in how neighbourhood features, such as the provision of local facilities and amenities, influence residents' health and well-being. Prior research has measured amenity provision through subjective measures (surveying residents' perceptions) or objective (GIS mapping of distance) methods. The latter may provide a more accurate measure of physic...

Using the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health data, we find a statistically and economically significant effect of neighborhood parks and playgrounds on childhood obesity based on covariate matching estimators. The park/playground effect depends on gender, age, race, household income, neighborhood safety, and other neighborhood amenities. The results suggest that adding a neighborhood par...

The present study explores the impact exerted by a series of factors and processes including creativity, IPR activities, new business formation and the provision of amenities on economic growth for 103 Italian provinces (NUTS 3) over the period between 2001 and 2006. Provincial growth rates are measured alternatively by value added growth and employment growth. Findings show a positive effect o...