Campus Built Environment and University Student Health in a Cold-Climate City: Mediating Roles of Daily Leisure-Time Physical Activity and Perceived Environment

The relationship between campus built environments and university student health has received considerable attention; however, this issue remains systematically underexplored in the context of cold-climate cities, particularly during winter, and the mediating roles of daily leisure physical activity and the perceived built environment remain unclear. Taking four universities in Harbin, China, as examples, this study analyzed self-reported questionnaire data from 1232 students using structural equation modeling. The built environment was differentiated into two dimensions: the physical built environment, referring to self-reported physical and functional characteristics, and the perceived built environment, referring to students’ subjective evaluations. The study further examined the direct, indirect, and sequential pathways through which these two dimensions, together with daily leisure physical activity, were associated with student health. The results showed that the physical built environment, perceived built environment, and daily leisure physical activity were all significantly and positively associated with student health, and that the direct association between the perceived built environment and health was stronger than that of the physical built environment. Daily leisure physical activity also functioned as a partial mediator in the relevant pathways. Given the cross-sectional self-reported design, these findings should be interpreted as associative pathways within a theory-based model rather than as established causal effects. The findings provide empirical support for health-oriented campus design in cold-climate cities: the physical built environment serves as a foundational factor for health, but its influence is largely transmitted indirectly through the perceived environment and daily leisure physical activity. The results further suggest that cold-climate campuses should prioritize investment in environmental qualities that can be meaningfully perceived by students and ensure that improvements to the physical environment are translated into perceptible experiential benefits, thereby providing transferable evidence for health-oriented design in campuses under similar climatic conditions.