## 4 Discussion  
There are several most important findings of the study. First, the PALs of studied adolescents significantly decreased, but this was mostly influenced by a large decrease of PALs in urban adolescents. Second, fitness status was related to baseline-PALs, while the associations between baseline fitness status and follow-up-PALs were strongly influenced by the factor of the living environment. Therefore, we may support our initial study hypothesis. Changes in Physical Activity Levels among Rural and Urban Adolescents as a Result of the COVID-19 Pandemic  
The PAL decreased significantly in the total sample, but we found an influence of the living environment (i.e., urban vs. rural community) on those changes, and the decrease in PAL as a result of social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic was greater in urban than rural adolescents. Although these findings deserve attention, the following discussion is limited by a lack of accurate data on PALs in Croatian rural areas, especially concerning the adolescent population. Therefore, our results are mostly contextualized to the findings of studies where authors provided evidence for other indices (i.e., health-related, economic, and social factors) in Croatian rural areas. Modern community development is focused on providing equal opportunities for rural and urban population in terms of income, living conditions, safety, health care, and other goods and services [39]. However, such intentions were not fruitful in Croatian rural areas, since studies showed that people living in rural areas regularly migrate to urban areas due to economic issues (e.g., lack of job opportunities and lower income) and the self-perception that living in rural areas means having a lower quality of life. Specifically, the perception of the quality of life among rural residents in Croatia is affected by dissatisfaction with social and health services and poorly developed infrastructure [39]. This results in an even lower likelihood of youth and adolescents engaging in organized sports in rural areas, which negatively influences the PAL among rural adolescents. Studies previously reported that urban adults have a higher PAL compared to their rural counterparts in Croatian coastal regions, like the region observed in this study, which was at least partially associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease in rural areas [40]. Cross-sectional  
Figure 4: Predictors of normal physical activity levels at follow-up (Model 0 – crude logistic regression, Model 1 – logistic regression controlled for urban/rural environment as confounding factor). analyses showed better fitness status among Croatian urban children/adolescents than in their rural peers [41]. The results presented in this study that show a lower baseline-PAL among rural adolescents are not surprising and are generally consistent with global reports where similar conclusions were presented [42; 43; 44]. In brief, the U.S. data also conform to these findings, i.e., that rural adults are less physically active than their urban counterparts [43; 44]. Portuguese rural boys were also found to be less physically active than urban boys, but this was not confirmed in girls [42]. Although such differences have mostly been explained by considering physical and environmental factors (i.e., access to sports facilities and programs), other factors were also shown to be potentially important determinants of higher PALs among urban youth (e.g., parental educational level and socioeconomic differences) [42; 45]. Considering the baseline-PAL status, it is not surprising that the PAL of urban adolescents decreased more than in rural adolescents simply because social distancing measures influenced the opportunity to practice organized sports. Specifically, although the influence of social distancing measures was probably not so pronounced for competitive sports (please see later discussion on correlates of follow-up-PAL), the fitness centers, dance centers, and gyms were closed.