Objective: To clarify the relationships among health-related quality of life, social factors, behavioral factors and the self-reported convenience of outdoor activity among older Chinese people with a physical disability. Gender differences were studied.
Method: A cross-sectional study of 1216 community-dwelling persons over or equal to 60 with a physical disability from Chinese Xiamen’s Xiang’an District between May and December 2019. The theory of planned behavior was applied to generate gender-specific structural equation models predicting convenience perceptions. The standardized coefficients explained the contribution of the variance.
Results: The final structural models demonstrated good fit. Convenience of outdoor activity for both women and men was directly impacted by their physical functioning (βwoman = 0.641, βman = 0.675, pboth ≤ 0.01) and intention of participation in community physical activities (βwoman = 0.134, βman = 0.302, pboth ≤ 0.01) , and indirectly by social and economic factors, pain, and role emotions. Positive mental health was more influential for women, while men were more influenced by social norms in the pathway.
Conclusions: Both gender models demonstrated good fit in predicting self-reported convenience of outdoor activity. Interventions targeting health-related quality of life, behavior and social factors could predict perceptions of the convenience of outdoor activities. Gender differences need to be considered.