The Association between Active Mobility and Subjective Wellbeing during COVID-19 in MENA Countries

Objective: To augment the international scientific approach to raising public mental health through active lifestyle among adults, we added the evidence of the association between physical activity and subjective wellbeing in the Middle East and North Africa region by emphasizing the mediator—COVID-19. This study aimed to identify the correlations between active mobility and subjective wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample from Tabriz, Iran, which has not yet been tackled in previous study. Methods: We finalized an online survey (N = 603) from adults between 5 June and 15 July 2021. This group reported their individual and socio-economic characteristics and their perception features and location (e.g., home, work) during COVID-19. The paper developed three ordinal logistic regression (OLR) models to examine the association between active mobility types such as commute, non-commute, frequency of active travel to parks and services per week, and different subjective wellbeing including: 1- life satisfaction, 2- feeling energetic, and 3- peaceful mind while controlling for socio-economic variables (e.g., age, gender, education, job, and income) and objective commute distance. We also incorporated the most relevant objective (street length, land-use mix, number of intersections, and building and population density) and subjective (perceived distance to different services, perceived walking places, and perceived facilities attractiveness) factors. Results: Positive response relationships between four types of physical activity levels and subjective wellbeing scores were demonstrated in all of the three developed models (with significant levels of 0.05, and 0.1) with appropriate model fits, which confirmed the existing literature. However, these relationships showed different patterns (varied significant levels) for each type of subjective wellbeing. In addition, the factors including street length (p value: 0.004), perceived walkable places (p value: 0.021, 0.068, 0.017, and 0.025) (positively), population density, and perceived distance to shopping malls (p value: 0.076, <0.0001, and 0.059 (negatively) were associated with different indicators of subjective wellbeing. Conclusion: As for the implication of our study, special actions by urban authorities such as increasing mixed-use and creating attractive places will be required to enhance the walkability of the neighborhoods. Moreover, notifying the adults regarding the benefits of physical activity is much more needed.