The willingness of inhabitants in medium-sized city and the city’s surroundings settlements to pay for recreation in urban forests in Poland

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the willingness-to-pay (WTP) in exchange for recreation, to determine the dependency between the frequency of visits and willingness of forest users to make contributions for urban forests and the appearance of the forest, as well as the sociological characteristics of the respondents. The research was carried out on the example of the mediumsized city of Tarnów, southern Poland. To this aim, a survey was conducted on a group of 309 adult respondents inhabitants of Tarnów city and city's surroundings settlements. For statistical analysis, the Classification And Regression Trees (CART) method was used to determine the dependency between the declared contributions and the characteristics of respondents, and the Principal Components Analysis for examining the dependency between WTP and the appearance (structure) of the forest. The dependency between the frequency of visits to urban forests and the demographics was analysed by chi-square test and one-way analysis of variance. The results showed that 97% of respondents are willing to make payments for urban forests, the amount of which differed depending on their place of residence, education, and age. Also, the vast majority of respondents make their WTP contributions dependent on the appearance of the forest. This applies in particular to a multi-stratum, multi-species forest with the undergrowth and recreational infrastructure. In addition, the frequency of visits to the area is affected by gender and place of residence. The obtained results are especially important for the recreation function of urban forests including willingness of inhabitants in Tarnów city and surroundings settlements.

Preferences of Young Adults concerning the Pocket Parks with Water Reservoirs in the Aspect of Willingness to Pay (WTP) in Warsaw City, Poland

“…Even though these objects are mostly small green spaces, their significance to the population is very high [26][27][28][29][30] especially in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic [19]. The willingness to pay by young adults for urban forestry itself is variable and depends on many factors, including, for example, the structure of the forest and small architecture, etc., [23,[31][32][33][34][35]. Determining the accuracy and reliability of the hypothetical WTP amounts reported is also significant.…”

“…This is in comparison to 76% in UK urban recreational parks [38], and in the territory of Finnish Joensuu, urban forests varied from 62% to 84% [39] (depending on question options). Higher WTP was found in Tarnów city's urban forests in Poland-97% [40]. The city's green spaces are attractive for residents' recreation [41].…”

“…The research carried out in Warsaw pocket parks is in line with this trend. However, there is no shortage of scientific reports that do not support this relationship [33][34][35]38,43,52]. This possibly comes from the fact that most often no entrance fees are charged to these types of facilities, and any costs of maintaining them are usually borne by local/municipal or state budgets.…”

Recreational Evaluation of Forests in Urban Environments: Methodological and Practical Aspects

“…The novelty of the presented research is the fact that our study area has not been investigated in this context before. Existing Polish research, even when dedicated to recreation, is not focused on forests in urban environments [47][48][49][50][51]. None of this research presents the same evaluation criteria catalog or the same scoring scheme, as we do.…”

Evaluation of current landscape architecture approaches in chosen cities in Poland and Slovakia

“…Materials and products for sustainable sites are those that minimize resource use, have low ecological impacts, have no or low human and environmental health risks and assist with sustainable site strategies (Calkins & Ap, 2009;Mandziuk et al, 2021b).…”