We aimed to explore the diversity in recreational walking motives across groups with different sociodemographic characteristics, and to use a dynamic and person-centered approach to geographically assess recreational walking behavior, and preferences for place quality related to recreational walking. The discussion will take its starting point in the three most dominant motives for recreational walking: health, experience, and social motives. It is followed by a discussion of the map-based approach to assess recreational walking behavior and related methodological reflections.

The analysis of motives for recreational walking showed that the physical and mental well-being was almost equally important for the respondents. The focus on the physical health benefits was underlined by the large share (67.6%) of respondents using a step counter-device and the motive was most prevalent for women and increased with age. This is not a surprising finding, as personal factors, or what have been called push factors (3), are important for walking behaviors. One of these factors is the motive for exercise [29]. The focus on mental health has gained more attention during the last decade, and a review of the evidence of walking suggest there is substantial evidence for positive effects on anxiety and depression and limited but emerging evidence for the positive effect on psychological stress and psychological well-being [32]. Having a tertiary education, being younger, and female were associated with the mental well-being motive.

Even though health and well-being are strong motives for recreational walking, a large majority also selected to enjoy walking and to experience something as their motives. Walking with the purpose of gaining a certain experience is what has been called pull factors [3], which is a key connection between recreational walking and environmental qualities. The experience motive was selected by 86.6% of the respondents and associated with being younger and female in addition to having a tertiary education and a higher income. To enjoy walking might be related to environmental qualities as well as other perceived benefits or internal values. This motive was also associated with higher income and being female, as well as older age, but not tertiary education. These findings are in contrast to the study on emotions during walking, who concluded that higher income and education were associated with less positive emotions during recreational walking [21]. Mondal and colleagues suggested that this might be due to excessive workload and time constraints in this part of the population [21]. The study methods were not similar, but an explanation for our differing findings could be the possibility for a break from a stressed day, a higher appreciation for environmental qualities, or more pleasant environments to walk.

Recreational walking often involves a social motive and is done in the company of others in 59.4% of trips from home and in 83,3% of trips with other start locations. The social motives to spend time with others and others ask me to come were more prevalent among women, younger individuals, city dwellers and those with higher income. Women were not more likely to select the care-giver motives of taking dogs, children or baby carriages for a walk. However, this was more prevalent for younger individuals and for individuals with a tertiary education. The association with age in relation to children is logical and aligned with the inverse association between selecting a playground as an environmental quality. The relation to tertiary education is not as straight forward. It could be explained by differences in values about childcare and the importance of outdoor experiences for their children. Another explanation could be a higher focus on risk, or simply a difference in parental status across this group.

Recreational walking is the most common physical activity for many people, and our results show that a variety of environmental characteristics, in combination with a range of personal factors, are predictive for recreational walking. Our results also show that it is not just the local neighborhood that is important, but a much larger geographical area. Other studies of environmental characteristics have used a neighborhood-based approach with different buffers around the home address to assess spatial exposure, but in this study, we used a dynamic and person-centered approach. The nearest environment within, for example, 1 km from home might have importance for recreational walking behavior, but our study shows that 71.4% of the recreational walkers use other start locations for their trips, and that the median distance to POIs is more than 1 km away from the home address. This is in line with, for example, Kajosaari and Laatikainen [33], who found that 40% of visits to leisure time physical activity locations were placed more than 1600 m from home, specifically for public green space, it was 33.6% of visits. Other studies have found consistent relationships between recreational walking and neighborhood-centric built environment measures [13, 15, 16]. Kajosaari and Laatikainen [33] points to another important aspect, which is that the least physical active participants tended to concentrate their activity closer to home. Our study participants are likely to more motivated and more active recreational walkers, and therefore have a wider range of destinations and use areas further from home.

In this study, we focused on recreational walking, particularly its relationship with perceived environmental qualities. Previous research has argued that recreational walking is less dependent on the environment compared to transport-related walking, as it does not require a specific destination [6]. However, based on our results, we would argue for the opposite since experience and enjoyment of the walking trip were prevalent motives. Aesthetic and scenic qualities, as well as atmospheric qualities, were among the most selected for the POI’s, which is in line with Mirzaei et al. [15] argument, that these qualities are crucial due to their relation to intrinsic motivation. We found that the mental well-being motive was nearly as common as the physical health motive, which underlines the importance of place qualities. Place qualities could foster mental well-being in several ways, with tranquility, solitude, and good atmosphere, being the more obvious ones. These qualities were also selected for a larger proportion of the POI’s.

Previous research has found a positive association between recreational walking and the presence of destinations and attributes of recreational destinations, such as parks [13]. Furthermore, the review highlighted that this association was particularly strong for the studies which included the quality of recreational destinations and route aesthetics. Hilland et al. [7] reinforced the significance of perceived neighborhood aesthetics and emphasized the importance of subjective perceptions of walkability and individual safety in influencing walking behaviors, especially among disadvantaged groups. The current study did not include environmental barriers like safety, fear of crime, traffic, noise, poor aesthetics which all can impact walking behaviors. The person centered SoftGIS approach used in the current study has previously been utilized to collect both positive and negative qualities related to the environment [34]. When implemented in the Helsinki metropolitan area and not focused on recreational walking, the top three positive qualities were attractive surroundings, possibilities for cycling and walking, and the presence of nature. The top three negative qualities were unattractive surroundings, a hectic environment and a feeling of social insecurity [34]. This study’s findings align with the emphasis on subjective perceptions of the environment in the reviews. While the study identified specific characteristics like greenery, attractive views, and tranquility as commonly selected, it underscores that subjective perceptions of walkability and neighborhood aesthetics are crucial in shaping walking behaviors.

The study invited a random subsample of consenting individuals who had participated in a nationwide survey in which they stated they engage in recreational walking. The sampling method increases the generalizability of the findings to Denmark and similar countries, encompassing both urban and rural areas, as well as areas and municipalities with different sociodemographic compositions. The study only includes respondents who reported to engage in recreational walking, and as such, we can only draw inferences regarding their motives and actual preferences and the differences among them. In other words, we had no data on people who do not walk for recreation. The large number of respondents and many POI’s across the country contribute equally to the generalizability of the results. However, the broad study area (an entire country) resulted in a low concentration of respondents in specific geographic regions and limited the use of certain spatial analysis methods, compared to more focused study regions. For example, in the current study, we were unable to investigate POIs in the same city across different socioeconomic groups due to the limited number of respondents in each city.

This study applied SoftGIS methods without limiting respondents to where they could place their walking trip start points and POIs. Many other studies of the relationship between physical activity and environmental characteristics are neighborhood-centered using census districts or home-based buffers with radii of 500 m or 1 km. However, in this study most of the POI were placed further away than 1 km from home. This was true for both trips from home and those starting from other locations, showing that people use a (much) larger ‘neighborhood’ when they walk for recreation. At the same time, map-based surveys are very practical for collecting empirical information on the subjective environment and perceived quality on the walking routes.

The original survey and the current study were conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected physical activity throughout the world [35]. While the data collection period for the current study saw the reopening of shops, services, and sport facilities, and the pandemic was on decline in Denmark, it is possible that the pandemic affected some of the results. For instance, it may have impacted the popularity of some of the environmental qualities: tranquility, solitude, and meeting other people, as well as the priority of spending time in the nature in general [36].

This study applied an exploratory approach and analyzed several associations between sociodemographic variables and a range of motives and environmental qualities. Therefore, multiple testing is a concern and should be considered in the interpretation of the results. Furthermore, as this is an exploratory study, further research is needed to draw conclusions on the causal relations between walking for recreation and environmental characteristics, as well interventions to promote recreational walking.