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Previous studies have shown both health and environmental benefits of green spaces, especially in moderating temperature and reducing air pollution. However, the characteristics of green structures have been overlooked in previous investigations. In addition, the mediation effects of green structures on respiratory mortality have not been assessed. This study explores the potential mediation pathways and effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality through temperature, primary and secondary air pollutants separately using partial least squares model with data from Taiwan. The measurable characteristics of green structure include the largest patch percentage, landscape proportion, aggregation, patch distance, and fragmentation. The results showed that mortality of pneumonia and chronic lower respiratory diseases could be reduced by minimizing fragmentation and increasing the largest patch percentage of green structure, and the mediation effects are mostly through reducing air pollutants rather than temperature. Moreover, a high proportion of but fragmented green spaces would increase secondary air pollutants and enhance health risks; demonstrating the deficiency of traditional greening policy with primary focus on coverage ratio. This is the first research focusing on mediation effects of green structure characteristics on respiratory mortality, revealing that appropriate green structure planning can be a useful complementary strategy in environmental health management.Air pollution and high temperature are significant public health threats, particularly in urban areas with intensive human activities under the trend of climate change. Many studies showed that increased morbidity and mortality of respiratory diseases are associated with high temperature 1-6 and various air pollutants, especially ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide [7][8][9][10][11] . Indeed, the risks of respiratory diseases are not only affected by environmental factors, but also by hereditary and lifestyle. However, environmental factors can be improved by public policy which offers opportunity to reduce risks of respiratory mortality. This study focuses on green spaces, an important environmental aspect, which could be designed by appropriate urban planning.Green spaces serve environmental functions of moderating temperature 12-16 and reducing air pollutants 15,[17][18][19][20] . For instance, Bowler et al.12 indicated that urban park was cooler than a non-green site (approximately 1 °C); Jim and Chen 17 showed that urban trees at Guangzhou removed 312.03 mg of air pollutants in 2000. Owing to practical problems involved in reducing air pollution and temperature increase from their sources, appropriate management of green spaces can serve as a complementary strategy for lowering risks of respiratory diseases caused by air pollution and temperature increase.Previous research on green spaces and health focused mainly on enhancing residents' psychological health (such as improving the happiness or r...

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