Associations Between Perceived and Objective Walkability and Walking and BMICase Study: Babol City

The present article seeks to investigate the inconsistency of objective and perceptual indicators of walkability in three different contexts in the city of Babol and its impact on the amount of self-reported walking and BMI.To measure objective walkability in the network index, connectivity, depth and integration have been used in space syntax, and to measure land use mix, entropy indicators and land use portion have been applied. In the assessment of perceptual walkability, by random selection of 384 people from three different contexts of the city of Babol as an example and in a radius of 800 meters from their houses as their neighborhood units, the walkability questionnaire of neighborhood has been applied. Then, the discrepancy between objective and perceptual indicators and the rate of walking and BMI were measured using multilevel logistic regression analysis.Positive mental perception significantly increases the Possibility of walking in neighborhood’s units with low connectivity and objective land use mix. According to the results, people whose mental perceptions of neighborhood with low connectivity are higher, 42% increase the possibility of walking as a transport and 21% increase the BMI. Conversely, a negative mindset in a neighborhood with more connectivity can reduce the possibility of walking for transportation by 31% and recreational walking by 23%.Furthermore, a positive mental perception of land use mix in neighborhood’s units that were evaluated as relatively one-functional ones, can increase the possibility of recreational walking by 28% compared to people who do not have this mental perception. In contrast, when resident’s mental perceptions of mixed used neighborhood are low, it can reduce respectively 46% and 47% of the possibility of walking for recreational and walking for transportation. Policies that aim to enhance people's physical activity can enhance the potential impact of walking and the BMI of residents by upgrade mental perception.