Martin Dijst

• Prof. dr.
• Managing Director at Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research

Greenness exposure has been associated with many health benefits, by providing opportunities for physical activity. Longitudinal studies are lacking, and most studies overlook the varying effects of different greenness types on physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB). We investigated 9-year associations of greenness characterized by over...

Streets comprise over 80% of all urban public space, while previous studies associated street network attributes with traffic and transport model choice, they did not examine network design in conjunction with symptoms of depression. This paper developed a path analysis model to examine the direct and indirect effects of street network designs on s...

The COVID-19 pandemic combined with lockdown measures fundamentally changed urban family life worldwide. This article compares how different household types—singles, couples, nuclear families, and extended families—experienced the lockdown during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing. It argues that not only the household responsibilit...

The COVID-19 pandemic combined with lockdown measures fundamentally changed urban family life worldwide. This article compares how different household types—singles, couples, nuclear families, and extended families—experienced the lockdown during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing. It argues that not only the household responsibilit...

Understanding the determinants of cycling and thus creating optimal cycling conditions is still a challenge. The current study addresses this challenge by providing in-depth exploration of attributes of bicycle infrastructure, traffic volume, gradients, urbanisation degrees in stimulating cycling for various population categories. Participants had...

Aim Evidence on the association between natural-built environments and depression is largely derived from the general population and prone to residential self-selection bias because of the nature of cross-sectional research design. Despite emerging adulthood, which includes the university years, is a critical stage for forming life-long health habi...

Background Migrants experience substantial changes in their neighborhood physical and social environments along their migration journeys, but little is known about how perceived changes in their neighborhood environment pre- and post-migration correlate with their mental health. Our aim was to examine the associations between recalled changes in th...

While in many regions the conventional bicycle has already been regarded as an environmentally friendly and healthy alternative to the car for daily commuting, societal and policy agendas are also increasingly promoting e-bike adoption. Adding to recent research on e-bike safety, satisfaction with travel and behavioral change, this paper reports on...

The Socio-Economic Impact (SEI) project focuses on data collection to support research on the short- and medium-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related (de)confinement measures in Luxembourg on individuals and their households in terms of work and living conditions, daily activities and mobility, and (not directly COVID-19 related) health...

Based on a survey conducted after the reform of the residential registration system (hukou in Chinese), this paper explores housing tenure change among China’s rural–urban migrants in a medium-size city. It emphasizes the long-term effect of their initial hukou status which encapsulates the conditions in their place of origin and the social capital...

Background: Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to residential green space is beneficial for people's mental health along multiple pathways. It remains unknown, however, whether the complex pathways found for the general population also apply to internal migrants in China. Aim: To examine the mediators of green space-mental health associati...

Although migration trajectories over people's life courses seem to be associatedwith mental health outcomes, previous studies have considered migration at onlyone point in time when correlating migration with mental health. However, peoplecan migrate multiple times during their life courses. The decision to migrate canbe triggered by several life c...

Advances in commercial wearable devices are increasingly facilitating the collection and analysis of everyday physiological data. This paper discusses the theoretical and practical aspects of using such ambulatory devices for the detection of episodic changes in physiological signals as a marker for mental state in outdoor environments. A pilot stu...

High-speed railway (HSR) has become a sustainable transport mode for inter-city travel, especially in China. As public transport (PT), the use of HSR involves access and egress to and from HSR stations. However, the literature focusing on the intra-city mode choice of HSR travelers is limited, especially regarding their differential socio-demograph...

The article discusses the feasibility and benefits of using immersive virtual environments (IVEs) to gauge the environmental preferences of individuals. The discussion is based on the results of a stated preference conjoint experiment employed within an IVE. In the experiment, participants were asked to rate and rank their cycling experience during...

Visiting tourists and residents of a city interact at various locations at various times. Previous studies paid little attention to comparing the spatio-temporal behaviours of tourists and residents from a long-term perspective. The aim of the present study was to identify and compare the spatio-temporal behaviours of mainland Chinese tourists and...

Advances in commercial wearable devices are increasingly facilitating the collection and analysis of everyday physiological data. This article discusses the theoretical and practical aspects of using such ambulatory devices for the detection of episodic changes in physiological signals as a marker for mental state in outdoor environments. A pilot s...

With climate change, weather has emerged as an important theme in transport research and planning. Although recent studies demonstrate profound weather effects on mobility in single case study areas, international cross-comparisons are required to reveal how effects differ between cities with different transport and climate regimes. This paper prov...

This paper reports on the effects of an e-cycling stimulation program on travel satisfaction in the province of North-Brabant, the Netherlands. The program was designed to stimulate car-commuters to shift to e-bike in daily commuting, earning a monetary incentive for each kilometre e-cycled. With a longitudinal design, this study shows a significan...

Understanding how infrastructures and urban environments shape the highly differentiated cycling experiences calls for further investigation. The current study addressed this challenge by employing Virtual reality (VR) applications. Quantitative methods were combined with a video simulation approach to model demand for cycling under different scena...

Background Air pollution has been shown to promote cardiovascular disease in adults. Possible mechanisms include air pollution induced changes in arterial wall function and structure. Atherosclerotic vascular disease is a lifelong process and childhood exposure may play a critical role. We investigated whether air pollution is related to arterial w...

Purpose: Understanding the geographical and environmental triggers for active transport among older adults is crucial to promote healthy and independent lifestyles. While transportation research has long considered trip purpose as a major determinant of transport mode choices, "place and health" research has paid little attention to it, and even le...

Long-term exposure to air pollution is considered a major public health concern and has been related to overall mortality and various diseases such as respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Due to the spatial variability of air pollution concentrations, assessment of individual exposure to air pollution requires spatial datasets at high resolution...

Citizens in urban areas are exposed to multiple environmental stressors like noise, heat, and air pollution, with impact on human health. There is a great deal of evidence that connects human health, objective environmental exposure, and place of residence. However, little is known about subjective and objective multiple personal exposures while be...

A growing body of research shows the positive effects of green open spaces on people’s health and well-being. However, there is still limited knowledge among local stakeholders, urban designers, and policy makers about how to plan, develop and maintain urban green and blue infrastructures to purposefully design more health and fitness into people’s...

Massive rural-urban migration in China has drawn attention to the prevalence of mental health problems among migrants. Research on the mental health of Chinese migrants has a narrow focus on rural-urban migrants, emphasizing the institutional role of hukou in migrant mental health. We argue that the heterogeneity of migrants, including their place...

Background: Both social and physical neighbourhood factors may affect residents' health, but few studies have considered the combination of several exposures in relation to individual health status. Aim: To assess a range of different potentially relevant physical and social environmental characteristics in a sample of small neighbourhoods in the N...

Supplemental material for Relations between the residential fast-food environment and the individual risk of cardiovascular diseases in The Netherlands: A nationwide follow-up study

Although interest in the concept of tradable driving credits (TDC) has increased in recent years, empirical research into the potential effects of such a measure is scarce. The study reported in this paper employed an activity-based approach to investigate drivers’ responses to two distance-based TDC scenarios. Three hundred and eight Dutch frequen...

Background: Cycling for transportation has the potential to contribute to an increase in people's physical activity levels. A growing body of evidence links the natural and the built environment to cycling. Whereas previous studies were mostly done within one city or one region, the present study covers the whole of the Netherlands, allowing an in...

This paper reports on the effects of an e-cycling incentive program in the province of North-Brabant, The Netherlands, in which commuters could earn monetary incentives when using their e-bike. The study used a longitudinal design allowing to observe behaviour change and mode shifts. The program appeared to be highly effective in stimulating e-bike...

Highest Scoring Abstract: Doctoral Background Cycling for transportation has the potential to contribute to an increase in people's physical activity levels. A growing body of evidence links the natural and the built environment to cycling. Whereas previous studies were mostly done within one city or one region, the present study covered the whole...

The High-speed Railway (HSR) network in China is the largest in the world, competing intensively with airlines for inter-city travel. Panel data from 2007 to 2013 for 138 routes with HSR-air competition were used to identify the ex-post impacts of the entry of HSR services, the duration of operating HSR services since entry, and the specific impact...

This paper investigates travel time attributed to non-work stops in multi-purpose commuting trips. Travel time is explained by socio-demographics and spatial attributes, mode shift is also included to analyze the extra travel time, and its trade-off with activity time for four types of non-work stops—eating out, shopping, leisure/social activities,...

The discussion on urban metabolism has been long dominated by natural scientists focussing on natural forces shaping the energy and material flows in urban systems. However, in the anthropocene human forces such as industrialization and urbanization are mobilizing people, goods and information at an increasing pace and as such have a large impact o...

China’s High-Speed Railways (HSR) network is the biggest in the world, transporting large numbers of passengers by high-speed trains through urban networks. Little is known about the analytical meaning of the use of two types of flow data, namely, time schedule (transportation mode flow) and passenger flow data, to characterise the configuration of...

Background The food environment has been hypothesized to influence cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and coronary heart disease. This study determines the relation between fast-food outlet density (FFD) and the individual risk for cardiovascular disease, among a nationwide Dutch sample. Methods After linkage of three national registers,...

Although the Chinese high-speed railway (HSR) entered the transportation market at a late stage in 2003, its networks have become the world's largest and are currently even growing faster than airline networks. Using the 2013 origin/destination (O/D) passenger flow data instead of commonly used scheduled data, we compare the spatial configurations...

Understanding how infrastructures and urban environments shape the highly differentiated cycling experiences calls for further investigation. The current study addressed this challenge by employing Virtual reality (VR) applications. Quantitative methods were combined with a video simulation approach to model demand for cycling under different scena...

Background: To improve our understanding of the neighborhood environment - physical activity (PA) relationship, it is of importance to assess associations between neighborhood environmental characteristics and neighborhood-based PA. Methods: Participants' (N = 308; 45-65 years) light PA (LPA) and moderate-vigorous PA (MVPA) within a 400, 800, an...

The aim of our study was to investigate the association between health enhancing and threatening, and social and physical aspects of the neighbourhood environment and general practitioner (GP) assessed morbidity of the people living there, in order to find out whether the effects of environmental characteristics add up or modify each other. We comb...

There is increasing interest in the application of tradable credit schemes in the context of personal travel. To anticipate the short-term effects of a distance-based tradable driving credit (TDC) scheme, an innovative stated adaptation experiment has been conducted. Using an activity-based approach, Dutch participants who frequently commute by car...

This chapter presents a conceptual framework for studying urban performance from a transportation perspective in effort to identify and define research issues and concepts related to urban performance. A key concept in this framework is accessibility, which is defined and analysed in section 'Infrastructure, Accessibility and Reach'. In general, ac...

In this concluding chapter, we discuss how these two perspectives on urban infrastructures and urban performance could be linked to each other. For this purpose, the next section proposes a framework for an integrated approach. Section 'Learning from theoretical and practical experiences' combines the most important issues raised in the contributio...

The use of private cars has increased rapidly in developing countries, causing congestion and pollution in cities. In Iran, measures have been taken to manage the extensive automobile use in Tehran. Two downtown traffic zones were introduced: The Restricted Traffic Zone (RTZ) based on pass permission and the Odd-Even Zone (OEZ) based on license-pla...

Background: The evidence from observational epidemiological studies of a link between long-term air pollution exposure and diabetes prevalence and incidence is currently mixed. Some studies found the strongest associations of diabetes with fine particles, other studies with nitrogen dioxide and some studies found no associations. Objectives: Our...

A healthy residential environment, especially for older adults, has emerged as an important issue on political and planning agenda in China. This paper aims to investigate the direct and indirect impact of residential environment on the health of older adults in Shanghai, taking into account health-related behaviours, subjective well-being and soci...

The world's population continues to grow. With a trend of urbanisation apparent, increasing attention is now being given to understanding and shaping our cities to support an evolving society. Urban metabolism concerns the flows of material and non-material resources and wastes that characterise the functioning and sustainability of a city and whic...

Natural environments (NE) are promoted as places that support physical activity (PA), but evidence on PA distribution across various types and sizes of NE is lacking. Accelerometers and GPS-devices measured PA of Dutch general population adults aged 45–65 years (N=279). Five NE types were distinguished: ‘parks’, ‘recreational area’, ‘agricultural g...

The high speed railway (HSR) has played a crucial role in the regional integration of urban networks in China. This paper analyses HSR passenger flows instead of commonly-used time schedules for measuring different polycentricity in urban networks. Using 2013 origin/destination (O/D) passenger flow data, we analyse the spatial configurations of 99...

Walking and cycling are effective means to increase people's daily physical activity. Since little is known about how differences in walking and cycling translate into inequalities in health benefits on the population level, this study quantified these health benefits for demographic and socioeconomic groups in the Netherlands. Population-represent...

Social sustainability is a relatively underexposed dimension of the sustainability debate. Diversified and discipline-specific study perspectives and the lack of contextualization make it difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of social sustainability in non-Western societies. In examining the problems facing a rapidly ageing Chinese socie...

Background: Cohorts based on administrative data have size advantages over individual cohorts in investigating air pollution risks, but often lack in-depth information on individual risk factors related to lifestyle. If there is a correlation between lifestyle and air pollution, omitted lifestyle variables may result in biased air pollution risk e...

Policy-makers in industrialised countries have been implementing polices to create neighbourhoods with diverse populations in the hopes of increasing and ameliorating inter-ethnic relations. However, social networks seem to remain largely segregated. The composition of people’s social networks is traditionally explained by population compositions a...

This paper analyses the residential mobility of China's rural–urban migrants in light of evidence from Yangzhou, a medium-sized city in Jiangsu province. To evaluate the effects of forced moves induced by demolition-led redevelopment, these outcomes are compared to those of voluntary moves. The evaluation is specifically concerned with dwelling att...

The unprecedented pace and scale of economic, social and spatial transformations in urban China have by now been well documented. But while it is highly likely that these changes relate to far-reaching alterations in travel behaviour as well, so far this topic has received much less attention. With this paper, we aim to help fill this gap through t...

This paper analyses the effects of residential relocation on China’s rural–urban migrants’ social networks in light of evidence from Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. Our study contrasts voluntary moves with forced moves driven by demolition-led redevelopment of urban villages. Based on data from a survey conducted between 2012 and 2013, the regression a...

Previous studies on the association between the availability of sports facilities and sports participation have neglected the influence of subjective constraints that individuals experience with regard to sports participation. This paper investigates to what extent constraints experienced by sports participants are associated with their spatial cir...

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in Tradable Credits (TC) as an alternative measure to manage the growth of personal car use. This paper summarises the results and methodologies of studies that have sought to anticipate the behavioural responses to several proposed TC schemes that target personal travel. In a critical reflection on this...

The aim of this Chapter is to develop a substantive relational framework for a better understanding of relationships between people and places. To that purpose time geographical concepts will be integrated with insights from practice theory, which is an umbrella term for theories that see practices at the core of social relations and emphasize...

The reform of China's socialist residential registration system (hukou) led to a shift in the residential preferences of rural-urban migrants, whereby the meaning of 'home' has also been changing. Data from a 2009 survey conducted in Suzhou City in Jiangsu Province highlight some emerging strategies for residential choice. Compared with 'first-gene...

Physical activity (PA) is influenced by the built environment. However, little is known about the types of built environment where adults spend their time, and at what levels of PA they engage in those environments. Understanding the effect of the built environment on PA requires insight into PA behavior at different types of locations (e.g., home,...

As a rapidly ageing population becomes an increasingly serious social challenge for Chinese megacities, issues affecting older adults’ subjective well-being (SWB) attract greater concern. However, it is difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of older adults’ SWB, since most SWB theories focus only on specific factors. Moreover, residential...

Gedragen door infrastructurele ontwikkelingen hebben steden zich in de loop der tijd getransformeerd tot stedelijke agglomeraties ook wel ‘daily urban systems’ genoemd. Deze ruimtelijk uitdijing ging gepaard met ruimtelijk deconcentratie en hergroepering in kleine en grotere centra van stedelijke functies voor bijvoorbeeld werken, wonen, winkelen e...

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are often proclaimed to facilitate the fragmentation of activities, a process whereby a certain activity is divided into several smaller pieces, which are performed at different times and/or locations. This study analyzes two-day combined activity, travel and communication diaries collected among Du...

Apart from work-hour commitments, rush hour commuting is dependent on household activities and responsibilities. It can also be gender specific when gender differences in performing household activities prevail. To that end, this study investigates gender differences in rush hour commuting in relation to daily household activities using data from T...

Although heterogeneity exists, Western countries can generally be characterised by a more individualistic orientation, whereas China is a more collectivist-oriented society that is undergoing a transformation. This empirical study examined socio-cultural differences between cities in China and the Netherlands in terms of companionship and urban mee...

Mobility management measures taken by firms could potentially result in more sustainable transport choices and hence reduce traffic congestion and emissions. Fringe benefits offered to employees are a means to implement those measures. This paper explores the most common commuting-related fringe benefits currently provided by employers in the Nethe...

With the increasing societal interest in climate change, mostly separated strands of literature have investigated the travel-behavioural, thermo-sensational and environmental–psychological effects of weather on people in everyday life. This research conceptually and statistically integrates these fragmented insights. Drawing on unique Greater Rotte...

In this paper, we analyze the effects of co-residence with elderly parents on gender differences in travel. The Household Responsibility Hypothesis (HRH) explains differences in the role of women regarding household responsibilities. However, research so far has studied “Western” household types while excluding households with co-residing elderly p...

This paper analyzes the housing tenure of China’s rural–urban migrants in eight destination municipalities in Jiangsu province after the reform of the urban registration system (called hukou in Chinese). The objective is to distill links between home ownership and formal residency status. Using binary logistic models, the paper explores the effects...

In post-reform China, rapid motorisation causes various problems like traffic congestion, diminishing road safety and air pollution. Adequate policies necessitate an understanding of the forces behind changing mode choices, but the rapidly developing literature is not complete yet. This paper aims to help fill that gap with an analysis of mode choi...

This paper explores in a hypothetical manner the meaning of increasing urbanization and modernization for people belonging to a more individualistic-oriented culture (The Netherlands) and more collectivistic-oriented culture (China). Both societies differ in degree of urbanization and modernization and as a consequence are expected to show differen...

Past research has indicated that the ethnic composition of residential neighbourhoods influences inter-ethnic contact. However, little attention has been paid to individual activity and travel patterns which encompass encounters with others at physical and virtual activity sites, such as sports clubs and online chat rooms. By analysing a Dutch data...