Environmental Changes to Promote Physical Activity and Healthy Dietary Behavior

This special issue is devoted to the study of environments that make physical activity and/or healthy dietary behaviors more likely. Empirical evidence regarding the influence of environmental factors on physical activity and dietary behavior is growing rapidly. The evidence base, however, is typically built on (cross-sectional) studies, based on self-reports. There is a dearth of studies with a longitudinal design and proper measurements of the environment, as well as studies that apply isolated (small-scale) environmental manipulations or those that involve (large-scale) intersec-toral collaborations in the implementation of sustained environmental interventions. The papers in this special issue address a wide variety of studies towards environmental influences on dietary behavior and physical activity. For example, studies in this special issue are aimed at developing good measurement instruments, applying systematic observations, longitudinal research designs, or focusing at environmental interventions and intersectoral collaboration. Multiple distinct target groups, settings, and behaviors are examined. The effects on children and adolescents as well as adults were included in this special issue. Some papers concern only the physical activity environment or only the dietary behavior environment, while other investigations reflect environments with a focus on both physical activity and diet. While reading the special issue, the reader will note that the settings investigated include the neighborhood environment, the school environment, child care, health care setting, food stores, and local government. Studies such as those presented in this volume will help us design interventions and health policies that change the environment in order to make physical activity and healthy dietary behavior more likely. In this respect, it is encouraging to realize that relatively small changes to cues in the physical environment may induce relatively large behavioral changes. Environmental changes, sometimes referred to as " nudges " , can be separated meaningfully into two different approaches. Passive nudges involve changes to the choice architecture of the environment to bias choices away from unhealthy options. Thus, changing the layout of cafeteria food [1] or even the positioning of items on the menu [2] can bias behavior towards more healthy choices. Similarly, stairs that are reached before an escalator are more likely to be chosen by pedestrians leaving a station on the way to work [3]. Of these two examples, it is clear that retrofitting the physical activity landscape towards more physically active choices would entail considerably more costs than reconfiguring the choice architecture of the canteen environment. Conversely, changing the pricing …