How do Spatiotemporally Patterned Everyday Activities Explain Variations in People’s Mental Health?

Min Yang and Donggen Wang

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2023, vol. 113, issue 8, 1781-1799

Abstract: Everyday activities in space and time have received much research attention in recent years. Geographers are interested in not only the spatial and temporal patterns of people’s everyday activities, but also the implications of such activities for social inequality and health outcomes. This study investigates how individuals’ weekday and weekend mobility and activities are associated with mental health. We argue that everyday activities play an important role in mental health because of the cognitive and affective processes associated with, not to mention the spatiotemporal exposure incurred by, conducting these activities. Data were collected in 2018 from 1,985 respondents living in thirty neighborhoods of Shanghai, China. Path analysis models are developed to establish links between daily activities and mental health, controlling for sociodemographics and residential location. Results show that mental health differs significantly among people not only of different sociodemographic groups, but also with different daily activity patterns. Weekday and weekend activities are found to have different influences on mental health. This research extends the existing literature on mental health by considering the mental health impacts of individuals’ daily activities and travel. The research findings are relevant for developing spatial policy interventions to promote mental health.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/24694452.2023.2201631 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:raagxx:v:113:y:2023:i:8:p:1781-1799

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/raag21

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2023.2201631

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of the American Association of Geographers is currently edited by Jennifer Cassidento

More articles in Annals of the American Association of Geographers from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().