Associations of school neighbourhood built environment profiles with active commuting behaviour in Spanish adolescents

Objective To investigate whether school neighbourhood built environment (SNBE) profiles are associated with adolescents' active commuting to/from school (ACS) and related outcomes (i.e., basic psychosocial needs, motivation, and barriers). Methods A total of 311 adolescents (14.36 ± 0.63 years; 54.34% girls) self-reported ACS-related outcomes. The SNBE was assessed at both the macro- and micro-scale . Principal component analysis followed by hierarchical clustering was applied to classify schools into different macro-scale and micro-scale profiles. Multilevel linear mixed-effects models and multilevel logistic regression models were conducted to examine the associations between ACS and related outcomes and macro- and micro-scale environment profiles. Results At the macro-scale level, no significant associations were observed between SNBE profiles and ACS-related behavioural or psychosocial outcomes. Similarly, no significant independent associations were observed for micro-scale environments. However, a non-significant tendency towards higher odds of active commuting from school was observed in high-support micro-scale environments (OR = 2.60; p = 0.069). On the other hand, when both environmental scales were considered jointly, adolescents attending schools in green and walkable macro-scale and high-support micro-scale environments reported lower planning/psychosocial barriers (β = −0.50; p = 0.004), as well as higher intrinsic (β = 0.75; p = 0.038) and integrated motivation (β = 1.10; p = 0.002). In addition, these combined environments were associated with greater odds of actively commuting to school (OR = 7.31; p = 0.012), while a non-significant tendency was observed for commuting from school (OR = 4.75; p = 0.098). Conclusion This study suggests that independent associations of macro- and micro-scale school neighbourhood environments with adolescents' ACS and related outcomes were limited. However, the combined presence of favourable macro- and micro-scale environments was associated with lower planning/psychosocial barriers, higher autonomous motivation, and greater odds of ACS.