Elderly's intention and use behavior of urban parks: Planned behavior perspective

Abstract

An urban park is a vital environment that promotes the elderly's physical, social and psychological health. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine the influencing factors that could encourage the elderly's usage of urban parks. However, little attention has been paid to elderly's intention of using urban parks. This study applies the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to understand the relationship between elderly's intentions of using urban park and use behavior. According to the nature of the different activity types elderly people intended to do in urban parks, three sub-models are built based on the original TPB model, which are social, enjoyment and physical activity-based models. These models explore the influencing factors that may affect elderly's use of urban park under the three different intentions. This study employed focus group meetings and questionnaire surveys (N = 537) to collect data and applied structural equation modelling to test the proposed social, enjoyment and physical activity-based models. In addition, this study found that elderly's use behavior of public parks was significantly affected by their intention of using public parks. The use behavior was also directly associated with intrapersonal constraints (degree of liking) and structural constraint variables (available leisure time and physical accessibility). Meanwhile, use behavior is indirectly associated with intrapersonal constraint variables (elderly's perception to urban park) and interpersonal constraints (conflict of use with other groups) through the influence of their intentions of using public parks. Furthermore, physical accessibility may affect elderly's use behavior, but it has no effect on elderly's intention of using urban parks. The findings and proposed models provide theoretical and practical contributions to better understand elderly's use behavior of urban park to encourage healthy ageing in an urban dense city.