Spatial runner : environmental and musical exposure effects on runners through an idealized routing network

Sammanfattning: Physical activities such as running have previously been proven to be positive on the health of individuals who partake in such activities. Further studies have separately analyzed the positive benefits of natural environments, such as forests, and positive effects of music on runners. This study evaluates how the presence or absence of such natural environments with and without musical stimuli effect the stress levels of individuals both physically and psychologically while running a predetermined route in the real world. Spatially Turn-Restricted Weighting Algorithm (STRWA) was created to solve the route creation criteria required of this study. The results of several analysis, both at the macro and micro levels of the study area, show that natural environments give lower physical stress levels than ones which have more urban characteristics. Additionally, music exposure further increases the positive feeling felt by a runner while increasing running speeds and only mildly increasing heart rate.