Identify travel and health factors influencing well-being of the older adults–a case study in China

OBJECTIVE: With the increase in aging populations worldwide, the travel well-being of the elders has gained attention. The objective of this study is to examine the nonlinear relationships between the well-being of the older people in China and factors associated with travel and health. METHOD: Based on the data collected in China, combined embedded feature selection and decision tree built by Gini index were utilized to screen for influential factors and to determine the importance of the features selected. Tamhane’s T2 was used to study the differences in the important factors among older people with different levels of travel well-being. RESULTS: This study found that the travel well-being of older adults depends mainly on accessibility to public places, such as schools and medical facilities, and the availability of bus services. Out of expectation, the most important influential factor of travel well-being of older people is the distance from home to high school. This is related to the traditional Chinese concept of education. In addition, it was found that the body mass index is more important than self-perceived health as an influence factor of travel well-being of the elders in China. Social skills are important factors too. CONCLUSION: This study investigated various health-related and travel-related factors and their impacts on the travel well-being of older adults Chinese with the overall goal to improve the quality of life of the elders in China. The findings may provide a theoretical basis for the implementation of various transportation management and urban planning and design -related policies to improve the travel well-being of older adults in China.