Accessibility to sport facilities in Wales: A GIS-based analysis of socio-economic variations in provision

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.04.010

Geoforum

Volume 62, June 2015, Pages 105-120

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.04.010 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Enhanced FCA approaches to measure access to sport facilities.
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Uses a national database of sport facilities.
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Tools developed are available for wider use.
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Accessibility scores are compared to variations in Townsend Index.
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Deprived areas greater access to publicly available sport facilities.

Abstract

Previous studies concerned with investigating the relationship between levels of physical activity and aspects of the built environment have often led to inconsistent and mixed findings concerning associations between the availability of recreational or sport facilities and area socio-economic status. Further complications may arise when analysis is conducted separately for access to either publicly available or private facilities or where alternative methodological approaches to measuring accessibility are adopted. This paper provides a review of such research before exploring the potential use of methods for examining variations in accessibility based on enhanced floating catchment area (FCA) models which are increasingly being advocated in medical geography applications. Using bespoke tools developed within a commercial GIS package, which are being made publicly available by the authors, and a national database of sport facilities, variations in accessibility are investigated in relation to a widely used measure of deprivation in the UK. Findings from this analysis suggest that whilst those living in deprived areas of Wales have greater potential access to publicly available sporting opportunities, associations with privately owned facilities are reversed for some distance thresholds and at different spatial scales. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the implications of such findings given current financial pressures on local government and other sport and leisure providers and highlights how spatial analytical techniques can be used to monitor such trends.

Section snippets

1. Introduction

Previous reviews of the factors that might promote or hinder engagement in, or levels of, physical activity have examined the relative importance of the local geographical environment. This includes access to sport facilities and their interaction with individual level characteristics such as age, income, ethnic group and gender, as well as a variety of socio-economic and behavioural variables (see for example Humpel et al., 2002, Davison and Lawson, 2006, Ding et al., 2011, Lee and Moudon, 2004

2. Access to sport facilities and deprivation: review of the literature

Previous studies using GIS to investigate potential consequences of health-promoting or health-damaging influences tend to adopt either density or proximity type metrics of resource availability. The former are area-based measures that typically count the number of facilities in a given administrative area (or within a spatial buffer around a residential address or area centroid) standardised by a population count (total or sub-group) to calculate a provider-to-population ratio. In contrast,

3. Floating catchment area (FCA) models

Previous studies have reviewed conceptual and methodological issues related to alternative approaches to measuring spatial accessibility using GIS (e.g. Apparicio et al., 2008, Higgs, 2004, Koppen et al., 2014a, Neutens, 2015, Wang, 2012, Yang et al., 2006). Yang et al. (2006) amongst others have compared the use of different approaches to measuring accessibility in the context of measuring social inequities in health care provision. Neutens (2015) highlights the shortcomings associated with a

4. Aims and objectives

This study aims to provide a descriptive analysis of trends in the provision of sporting facilities in relation to a well-established measure of disadvantage in the UK (the Townsend Index). Using a national database of facility locations and small area socio-economic data drawn from the UK Census of Population the paper describes the potential for E2SFCA models to investigate spatial patterns in service provision in relation to socio-economic characteristics in Wales. It presents several

5.1. Database of sport facilities

A database of all privately and publicly-owned sport facilities in Wales as of January 2014 was provided by Sport Wales (Fig. 1). It included information on owner type (e.g. commercial, local authority, higher education establishment), usage status (e.g. registered membership use, pay and play, private use), physical availability (disabled access and parking) and facility type descriptions (e.g. health and fitness, sports hall, swimming pools, tennis courts). In total this covered 2276

6.1. All facilities and private/public split and variations in threshold distance

Firstly when all facilities are considered there is a general pattern of FCA scores being low for those areas in Townsend quintile 1 (least deprived) and high in the most deprived quintiles (quintile 3–5). However for at least the ‘all facilities’ and ‘public facilities’ categories, the highest mean scores are in quintile 3 (Fig. 5). At the 1000 m threshold level, patterns for all three categorisations are consistent. However, as expected given that larger threshold distances capture spatial

7. Discussion

Previous studies of the relationship between levels of physical activity and different aspects of the built environment have often led to inconsistent and mixed findings concerning trends in the availability of sport facilities and variations in socio-economic geography. The main strength of the present study is that it outlines the first attempt to use floating catchment area (FCA) techniques to provide a measure of potential accessibility to sport facilities using a high quality nation-wide

8. Conclusion

The research reported here shows how GIS-based analysis can be used to identify variations in accessibility to the network of sporting facilities as part of wider studies concerned with exploring variations in sport participation rates and levels of physical activity. The study has shown how floating catchment area (FCA) approaches, widely used to examine variations in accessibility to a range of predominantly health services to date, can be used in conjunction with a nation-wide database of

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research supported by the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD). WISERD is a collaborative venture between the Universities of Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, South Wales and Swansea. The research that this publication relates to was funded by the ESRC (Grant number: ES/L009099/1). We thank Sport Wales for the provision of data on facilities within Wales. Census data were downloaded from NOMIS, a service provided by the Office for

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Accessibility to sport facilities in Wales: A GIS-based analysis of socio-economic variations in provision

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

1. Introduction

2. Access to sport facilities and deprivation: review of the literature

3. Floating catchment area (FCA) models

4. Aims and objectives

5.1. Database of sport facilities

6.1. All facilities and private/public split and variations in threshold distance

7. Discussion

8. Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Ann. Epidemiol.

Prevent. Med.

Prev. Med.

Spatial Spatio-Temporal Epidemiol.

Health Place

Health Place

Health Place

Am. J. Prev. Med.

Health Place

Health Place

Appl. Geogr.

Health Place

Prevent. Med.

Soc. Sci. Med.

Health Place

Sport Manage. Rev.

Am. J. Prevent. Med.

Appl. Geogr.

Am. J. Prevent. Med.

Health Place

Health Place

Urban Forest. Urban Green.

Health Place

Health Place

Soc. Sci. Med.

Health Place

J. Sci. Med. Sport

Appl. Geogr.

J. Transp. Geogr.

Am. J. Prevent. Med.

J. Transp. Geogr.

Health Place

Soc. Sci. Med.

Health Place

Health Place

Health Place

Am. J. Prevent. Med.

Health Place

Soc. Sci. Med.

Soc. Sci. Med.

Soc. Sci. Med.

Health Place

Sport Manage. Rev.

Comparing alternative approaches to measuring the geographical accessibility of urban health services: distance types and aggregation-error issues

Int. J. Health Geogr.

A review of spatial methods in epidemiology

Annu. Rev. Public Health

Measuring the built environment for physical activity: state of the Science

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Spatial accessibility to physical activity facilities and to food outlets and overweight in French youth

Int. J. Obesity

Maintaining existing zoning systems using automated zone-design techniques: methods for creating the 2011 Census output geographies for England and Wales

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