What is the role of trees and remnant vegetation in attracting people to urban parks?

Abstract

Public parks commonly contain important habitat for urban biodiversity, and they also provide recreation opportunities for urban residents. However, the extent to which dual outcomes for recreation and conservation can be achieved in the same spaces remains unclear. We examine whether greater levels of (i) tree cover (i.e. park 'greenness') and (ii) native remnant vegetation cover (i.e. vegetation with high ecological value) attract or deter park visitors. This study is based on the park visitation behaviour of 670 survey respondents in Brisbane, Australia, detailing 1,090 individual visits to 324 urban parks. We first examined the presence of any clear revealed preferences for visiting parks with higher or lower levels of tree cover or remnant vegetation cover. We then examined the differences between each park visited by respondents and the park closest to their home, and used linear mixed models to identify socio-demographic groups who are more likely to travel further to visit parks with greater tree cover or remnant vegetation cover. Park visitation rates reflected the availability of parks, suggesting that people do not preferentially visit parks with greater vegetation cover despite the potential for improved nature-based experiences and greater wellbeing benefits. However, we discovered that people with a greater orientation towards nature (measured using the nature relatedness scale) tend to travel further for more vegetated parks. Our results suggest that to enhance recreational benefits from ecologically valuable spaces a range of social or educational interventions are required to enhance people's connection to nature.

Effects of biodiversity and environment-related attitude on perception of urban green space

“…the plants that we sampled. Previous studies support our assumption and the perception of urban green space has often focused on conspicuous plants (Fuller et al 2007;Dallimer et al 2012;Shwartz et al 2014;Carrus et al 2015;Shanahan et al 2015). Moreover, vegetation cover was positively related to personal well-being in a study comprising 9 Australian towns and cities (Luck et al 2011).…”

“…Recent research in Brisbane, Australia, has shown that park visitors with stronger nature orientation traveled further and made longer visits than park users with a less pronounced nature orientation (Lin et al 2014). Moreover, park visitors with greater nature orientation tended to go to urban parks with higher levels of tree cover and remnant native vegetation and thus they were prepared to travel to such parks instead of using nearby parks (Shanahan et al 2015). Individual differences in perception of green space should thus be addressed when urban planners design city parks.…”

Preferences for Urban Green Space Characteristics: A Comparative Study in Three Portuguese Cities

“…These results seem to echo the complex relationships between people's preferences and perceived biodiversity values [55,56], under an apparent 'people-biodiversity paradox' [57]. In fact, the results for this paper echo other similar studies in which vegetation diversity was found to be moderately to very important [17,23,26] but contrasts with other studies that have identified negative preferences related to habitats of high plant species richness [56,58,59]. However, a moderate emphasis is given to animal species richness (7.8%, range by city, 6.8-9.5%), but even so, deserving a greater importance than in other studies [23,52,53].…”

Utilization patterns of urban green infrastructure in southern Ethiopia

“…The analysis result of this study confirmed that people who live close to urban parks, green areas, religious institutions, and parkland tend to frequent involvement of physical activity. Another study conducted by Shanahan et al (2014) in Australia show usually tourists have been visiting parks near to their home than parks far from their home, which suggests that factors other than distance played a role. On the contrary, a UK based study conducted by Hillsdon et al (2006) show that there is no significant relationship between physical activity and green space availability as measured by distance and size of urban green spaces.…”