Exploring Socio-Cultural Influences on Active Transportation Behaviour for Health Improvement

Abstract

Socio-cultural factors refer to the group-level attributes of the life cycle circumstances such as modelling, social support, social climate, and culture. The social environment is considered an important contributor to active transport behaviour for health improvement by a number of researchers. An individual’s interaction with various social environments impacts health-related behaviour such as physical activity participation. In turn, participating in physical activity contributes to the social well-being of individuals. Research studies on health behaviour often concentrate on investigating the individual characteristics of health-related behaviour or lifestyle that form certain health behaviours. As a result, interventional studies focused on changes in health behaviour have often yield unsatisfactory results due to neglecting to include the influence of the broader social contexts that shape behaviour. Although it is known that certain behaviours could lead to disease development, how the behaviours appear, and are maintained and modified remains unclear. Thus, there is a growing concern to study the role of social context in shaping health behaviour for health improvement.