Activity spaces, community resource brokers, and real-time stress and affect: Evidence from the Boston Activity Space and Health Study

While we know that the places where we live matter for our health and well-being, other spaces in the city we visit during the day—like places where we work, worship, exercise, and buy groceries—also matter. Little work, however, has explored how daily experiences with these routine community institutions and organizations shape our emotional responses. This study uses data from the Boston Activity Space and Health Study (BASHS), a smartphone-based data collection of adults’ GPS locations and ecological momentary assessments, to capture in-the-moment responses to their daily activity space environments for 7 days. We use random effects models to estimate associations between resource broker access and real-time accounts of stress and affect, and whether these relationships are conditional on the utilization of the resource brokers. Our findings suggest that beyond having regular access to community resource brokers, utilizing them on a regular basis is impactful for alleviating momentary emotional and physiological distress. By detailing the unique role of resource brokers, the current study makes substantive and methodological contributions to our understanding of how activity spaces matter for health and well-being.