Emotional perceptions of people exposed to green and blue spaces in forest parks of cities at rapid urbanization regions of East China

Abstract

Urbanization modifies the landscape with green and blue spaces (GBS), which further leads to a functional change along an urban-rural gradient. Emotional improvement is a critical service of GBS, which may be perceived and exposed through facial expressions by visitors. How people react, however, may vary at different locations of a city at varied phases of urbanization. In this study, happy and sad emotions were rated as scores from 7965 Sina-Weibo users who visited 77 GBS across 49 cities of East China in 2020. GBS were located in different regions of a city, either near downtown or in more rural-like regions. Compared to cities near the Hu Huanyong line, those along the eastern coast were built with parks that had smaller green spaces at lower elevations in locations near downtown. They also had larger blue spaces in parks at suburban areas of the same cities. People expressed more happiness in GBS in regions closer to remote rural regions, or in cities further from the eastern coast. Larger green spaces were associated with by the presentation more smiles in parks near downtown, while experiences in large blue spaces evoked positive emotions at suburban areas. Overall, GBS in population-dense regions of more developed cities can be perceived as an activation of exposing higher depression by visitors. More smiles can be exposed in GBS with a large green space near downtown, or with a large blue space at suburban regions of a city in East China.