Perceived Quality of Urban Wetland Parks: A Second-Order Factor Structure Equation Modeling

Abstract

Wetland in the urban or peri-urban areas has been recognized as an important component of urban ecosystems and provides ecological and environmental services. Wetland park emerged as a kind of restoration of natural wetlands in the context of increasing pressure on land and eco-environment caused by urban sprawl, which has played an essential role in providing recreational spaces/opportunities and improving social interactions. However, little research has been conducted on the theoretical formulation elaborating individuals’ perceived quality of wetland parks when people are engaging in activities therein. This study is an attempt to develop a method to measure the quality of wetland parks based on individuals’ various perceptions and attitudes. From the view of human-nature interaction, the perceived quality is hypothetically conceptualized as a composite of two dimensions, such as comfort perception and environmental satisfaction. A series of questionnaire-based surveys were conducted among respondents (N = 936) in Yanghu wetland park in Changsha, China. Based on the measured items from on-site surveys, second-order factor structural equation modeling is applied to estimate the hypothesis of a hierarchical structure for elaborating how the quality of wetland park is perceived by individual respondents. The results test the hypothesis that the quality of wetland park as a second-order theoretical construct can be conceptualized by two first-order theoretical constructs, individuals’ comfort (loading = 0.749), and environmental satisfaction (loading = 0.828). In addition, a significant influence of attitudes toward green space on the perceived quality of wetland park has been identified.

Contribution Degree of Different Surface Factors in Urban Interior to Urban Thermal Environment

“…Furthermore, their study also showed that although landscape composition and arrangement both have an impact on LST, landscape composition is more important than landscape layout; thus, one component indicator (e.g., impervious surface) together with no more than four landscape layout indicators can well lead to the prediction of LST [23][24][25][26][27]. ese research results can help landscape ecologists effectively use landscape indicators and promote landscape planners to make balanced use of land use types (LUTs) in urban planning [28][29][30][31][32][33]. Mainly, land surface characteristics are primarily represented by land cover and land use (LCLU).…”

“…After the establishment of the indexes, the same index value can contain different types of surface factors. Although the fitting with the LST can point to a specific trend and indicate a particular connection [24][25][26][27][28][29][30], we do not know precisely what type of surface factors respond to the thermal environment [4][5][6][7] and how much they are affected [8][9][10]. rough regression statistics, more than 95% of confidence level indicates that vegetation has the greatest influence on the rate of change of environmental temperature, with a contribution coefficient of about 0.17, followed by dark soil with a contribution coefficient of 0.16, and water bodies and buildings with high reflectivity have the least contribution coefficient to the thermal environment.…”

Study of citizen satisfaction and loyalty in the urban area of Guayaquil: Perspective of the quality of public services applying structural equations

“…These are positively related and shows us the probability that a citizen has a high level of well-being measured as satisfaction in the set of municipal services and recommends the city as a place to live, attracting population to it, facing the problem of depopulation. from urban areas [ 48 – 69 ] and these affect the likelihood that citizens will stay and recommend the urban area, thus avoiding the dreaded depopulation [ 49 ].…”

Assessing Comfort in Urban Public Spaces: A Structural Equation Model Involving Environmental Attitude and Perception

“…As the essential components in urban system, outdoor and semi-outdoor environments can provide open spaces for hosting various recreational, social and commercial activities [16]. On the other hand, the outdoor green spaces in urban areas are facilitating to adapt to the increased heat stress and evolving into an important contribution to the energy efficiency of the surrounding buildings [17,18].…”