The impact of socio-demographic, environmental, and individual factors on urban park visitation in Beijing, China

Abstract

Urban parks improve quality of life by providing an array of cultural and natural ecosystem services, such as maintaining biodiversity, reducing air pollution, and benefiting residents' physical and mental states. Although government invests a large amount of capital into park management, parks are still underused in many cases. In this study, the association and relative importance of socio-demographic, environmental, and individual factors were investigated with regards to their impact on citizens' park visitation. Data was collected through cross-sectional door-to-door questionnaires and online databases, and was analyzed using a hierarchical regression model. Results showed that physical exercise (27.4% of collected reports) and rest and relaxation (26.7%) were the two most widespread reasons for park use. When asked about constraints of park visitation, time limitations were reported as being the most constraining factor. However, our quantitative analysis found no significant correlation. Socio-demographic, environmental, and individual variables explained 1%, 20% and 26% (adjusted R 2 ) of the total variance in frequency of park visitation between participants, respectively. A citizen's neighborhood greenspace, housing price, and distance from the nearest park were negatively correlated with park use. Among individual factors, a participant's reported affinity for park visits, time spent in their residential greenspace, and number of children under seven were positively correlated with park visitation, with a decreasingbcoefficient. This research highlights the predominant contribution of attitude over accessibility factors when it comes to park visitation. Furthermore, the data indicates that accessibility factors function differently for frequent, infrequent, and moderate park users and provision with parks within 1000 m of their home is recommended. The findings have implications for park management and future research.

Impact of built environment on physical activity and obesity among children and adolescents in China: A narrative systematic review

“…The primary reasons for exclusion were lack of neighborhood environment measures, no outcome reported on PA and childhood obesity, and adult sample instead of children and/or adolescents. The remaining 20 studies that examined the relationship between built environment and children's PA and/or body weight status were included in our review 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49Fig.1Study selection flowchart.…”

“…(2014) 42 The Mainland of ChinaCross-sectional463<1851.2Permanent residentsLogistic regression21.5Community in 10 provincesUrban and rural14Liu etal. (2015) 43 The Mainland of ChinaCross-sectional2911–2051.6Community residentsHierarchical linear regression32.9Community and park in a cityUrban and suburban15Zhang etal. (2015) 44 The Mainland of ChinaCross-sectional7515–2053.0Permanent residentsOrdinal logistic regression58.3Green space in a cityUrban and suburban16Wong etal.…”

Impact of Perception of Green Space for Health Promotion on Willingness to Use Parks and Actual Use among Young Urban Residents

“…Although the literature concerning the factors affecting park usage is accumulating in China, most studies focus on the objective environment attributes, such as park pathways [ 32 , 33 ], quality of greenery [ 34 ] and accessibility [ 35 , 36 ]. Studies examining the psychological mechanism of built environments on individual’s park use behavior are still insufficient.…”

Understanding the Living Conditions of Chinese Urban Neighborhoods through Social Infrastructure Configurations: The Case Study of Tianjin

“…For the promotion of the grassroots leisure activities in daily life, the government has done a lot of work in facility development and service delivery [40]. However, no matter how many urban parks or sport facilities exist, spatial distance is still one of the major factors that restricts the utilization in many cases [41,42]. Among all of the leisure facilities, only those that are reachable within a limited commuting time from dwellings are frequently visited by the local inhabitants.…”