Factors promoting nature-based outdoor recreation during the daytime and evening

Abstract

Urban green spaces are the most common places for nature-based recreational activities. However, the issues on which landscape characteristics during the daytime and lighting features during the evening can encourage recreational activities, and how to enhance the diversity of recreational activity in a place are poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, 20 sites of urban green spaces were sampled. The same scene at each site was photographed during the daytime and evening. The suitability of 10 nature-based recreational activities was assessed, and 17 characteristics of daytime landscapes and five lighting features in the evening were quantified. For daytime landscapes, the study found that reducing the amounts of man-made elements and vegetation density could encourage walking, improving water quality and reducing aquatic plants could promote fishing, increasing the coverage of waterscape and vegetation promoted chanting, increasing the coverage of waterscape would encourage sightseeing, enhancing the accessibility of waterscape was beneficial to meditating, and reducing the intensity of maintenance encouraged both gathering and tree climbing, but no measures could be identified for jogging, sitting and barbecue. For evening landscapes, setting the lighting sources in the distance of visitors' vision and increasing brightness of lighting could promote walking and jogging, increasing the number of lighting sources encouraged fishing, chanting, sightseeing, sitting, meditating and tree climbing, and the mixture of warm and cold light colors promoted gathering, while no measures were found to encourage barbecue. Decreasing the vegetation coverage could promote the diversity of recreational activity during the daytime, and increasing the number of lighting sources and reducing the brightness of lighting enhanced the diversity of recreational activity during the evening. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose the concept “diversity of recreational activity” and explore its driving factors. For daytime landscapes, decreasing the amount of man-made elements and thinning the thick vegetation can encourage walking; improving water quality and reducing the aquatic plants growing on water are convenient for fishing; increasing the coverage of waterscape and vegetation are efficient measures to encourage chanting; increasing the coverage of waterscape and enhancing the accessibility of waterscape can promote sightseeing and meditating, respectively; and reducing the maintenance of vegetation can encourage the activities of gathering and tree climbing. For evening landscapes, setting the lighting sources in the distant view of visitors and increasing the brightness of a place will encourage walking and jogging; increasing the number of lighting sources and setting the lighting sources in the close view of visitors encourage fishing; setting the mixture of warm and cold light can promote gathering, and increasing the number of lighting sources can encourage chanting, sightseeing, sitting, meditating and tree climbing. Decreasing vegetation coverage can enhance the diversity of recreational activities in daytime landscapes, while for evening landscapes, increasing lighting sources and reducing the brightness of lighting will improve the diversity of recreational activities. Based on theoretical analysis, this study suggests that the positive elements for recreational activity in daytime landscapes should be illuminated during the evening and the negative elements could be concealed by the darkness.