Using Geovisualization Tools to Examine Attitudes towards Alcohol Exposure in Urban Environments: A Pilot Study in Madrid, Spain

Andrea Pastor, Xisca Sureda, Roberto Valiente, Hannah Badland, Macarena García-Dorado and Francisco Escobar
Additional contact information
Andrea Pastor: Public Health and Epidemiology Research Group, School of Medicine, University of Alcalá, Campus Universitario-Ctra. de Madrid-Barcelona, Km. 33,600, 28871 Madrid, Spain
Xisca Sureda: Public Health and Epidemiology Research Group, School of Medicine, University of Alcalá, Campus Universitario-Ctra. de Madrid-Barcelona, Km. 33,600, 28871 Madrid, Spain
Roberto Valiente: Centre for Research on Environment, Society and Health (CRESH), School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK
Hannah Badland: Health, Place and Society Group, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
Macarena García-Dorado: Department of Geology, Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Alcalá, 28801 Madrid, Spain
Francisco Escobar: Department of Geology, Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Alcalá, 28801 Madrid, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 15, 1-15

Abstract: Pervasiveness of alcohol products and their promotion in the urban landscape may normalize alcohol consumption. This study aims to utilize geovisualization-based methods to assess attitudes towards different levels of alcohol exposure in the urban environment. We selected a typical downtown location, Lavapiés Square in Madrid, Spain, to conduct our study. First, we designed and created realistic 3D models simulating three different urban scenes with varying degrees of exposure to alcohol in the environment. Second, we used a survey on 159 adults to explore the level of acceptance of, attitudes towards, and perceptions of alcohol exposure in each scene. Participants reported a higher level of comfort in the scene with null alcohol exposure compared with the other scenes ( p < 0.001). Acceptance towards alcohol exposure decreased as the level of alcohol elements increased in the scenes ( p < 0.01). Acceptance also decreased when children were present in the scenes ( p < 0.01). This study demonstrated that geovisualization tools provide a useful and well-suited approach to analyze perceptions of the alcohol environment. The use of geovisualization can help understand attitudes and perceptions towards the alcohol environment and may offer a way to simulate different scenarios prior to development or retrofitting.

Keywords: alcohol environment; GIS; alcohol normalization; scenarios; urban planning; simulation; public health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/15/9192/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/15/9192/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:15:p:9192-:d:873597

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().