To meet the comfort and health needs of the elderly in daily activity environments, a refined temporal and zonal thermal environment design across diverse spaces must align with dynamic changes in their daily activity spatiotemporal trajectories. This constitutes a research gap in the existing literature. This study focused on elderly individuals in rural Xi’an, integrating on-site subjective daily activity questionnaires, thermal comfort field surveys, and continuous thermal environment monitoring to evaluate summer thermal environments based on spatiotemporal activity differentiation. The key conclusions are as follows: (1) Elderly people primarily engage in activities in indoor and outdoor spaces, with considerably fewer activities occurring in semi-outdoor areas. Summer outdoor activities occur between 6:00 and 9:00 and 17:00–21:00, while indoor activities dominate other times. (2) The established adaptive thermal response models indicate indoor and outdoor neutral temperatures are 23.8 °C (Operative temperature) and 28.8 °C (UTCI). Indoor 80% acceptability upper limit is 27.5 °C and outdoor 80% acceptability upper limit is 34.1 °C. These results exhibit distinct differences from those observed in alternative climate zones and urban areas in the same climate zone. (3) The thermal environment of outdoor shaded areas remains within the acceptable range for a longer duration than that of indoors, and kitchens have the worst indoor thermal quality. This evaluation provides supplementary insights into current spatiotemporal thermal environment research.

Elderly individuals in rural China are highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and temperature fluctuations due to inadequate infrastructure in the built environment and constrained economic conditions, thereby increasing their health risks. Outdoor spaces represent one of the primary daily activity settings for rural older adults. However, existing research rarely links spatiotemporal patterns of outdoor activities to evidence-based thermal environment optimization, leaving a critical knowledge gap for age-friendly and sustainable rural design. This study focuses on the spatiotemporal differentiation patterns of daily outdoor activities among elderly people aged 60 years and above in rural Xi’an, as well as the optimization of spatial variations in thermal environments. Using on-site interviews, thermal environment measurements, thermal comfort questionnaires, continuous thermal environment monitoring, and machine learning based on random forest, this study drew the following conclusions: (1) outdoor activities in winter were concentrated between 9:00–11:00 and 13:00–17:00, while in summer, they shifted to the morning and evening periods, namely 6:00–9:00 and 17:00–21:00. (2) Models for outdoor clothing adjustment, thermal sensation, and thermal acceptability among elderly residents were established. The calculated neutral temperature was 10.19 °C, with a 90% outdoor thermal acceptability range of 9.6–27.2 °C and an 80% outdoor thermal acceptability range of 6.2–30.6 °C. These findings differ from those documented in regions with distinct climate zones and geographical settings. This discrepancy stems from regional climatic features, lifestyle variations between urban and rural older adults, and differences in the thermal environment quality of elderly-oriented outdoor activity spaces. (3) In winter, the acceptable period of the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) at south-facing entrances (10:30–16:30) was significantly longer than that in the courtyard (13:30–14:00). In summer, the comfortable period in the courtyard (before 10:00 and after 20:00) was longer than that at north-facing entrances (before 09:00). A random forest model for thermal sensation was established, and the relative importance of each parameter influencing thermal sensation was analyzed. On this basis, priority improvement pathways and strategies for the thermal environment, as well as suggestions for the subjective adaptive behaviors of elderly residents, were proposed. The research results of this study can provide technical solutions for age-friendly thermal environment design in rural areas, thereby safeguarding the comfort, health, and social well-being of the elderly population in rural areas.