Impact of Perception of Green Space for Health Promotion on Willingness to Use Parks and Actual Use among Young Urban Residents.

Chongxian Chen,Xiaohao Yang,Weijing Luo,Haiwei Li,Danting Zhang,Ning Kang,Yu Xia

doi:10.3390/ijerph17155560

Abstract

Promoting the use of green space is a fundamental way to improve physical and mental health and to enhance the quality of life of urban residents. In response to increasing demand for green space in cities, the impact of perception of green space for health promotion on willingness to use parks and actual use among young urban residents was investigated in this study. A total of 1135 young residents (ages 18–35) in three cities in China were surveyed by online questionnaire. A group of multiple regression models was constructed to investigate the influencing perception factors of participants’ willingness to use parks and actual use. The results revealed that the young residents’ perception of green space components for health promotion (green space access, types, sizes, plants, water, sensory features, microclimate environments and amenity facilities) had a greater effect on their willingness to use parks and to promote health, while it was less influential with respect to their actual park use behavior (frequency and duration). Among these variables, green space access is a critical concern for willingness to use toward parks. The disparities of perception of green space for health promotion effect on willingness to use a park and actual use provide a better understanding of the psychological factors affecting park use among young residents. The findings also provided some implications for public health policymakers, urban planners and landscape architects in designing parks to encourage visitation by young people.

Highlights

As urbanization and populations rapidly increase, maintaining livable and healthy cities has become a great challenge around the world [1]
The Composite reliability (CR) coefficients for each independent variable exceeded the threshold value of 0.7 [97] and average variance extracted (AVE) scores were calculated with values higher than 0.5 in Table 1 [98], indicating that the results were acceptable
The results revealed that young residents’ perception of green space components for health promotion had a greater effect on their willingness to use parks to promote health

Summary

Introduction

As urbanization and populations rapidly increase, maintaining livable and healthy cities has become a great challenge around the world [1]. The inactive urban lifestyle is thought to be associated with increases in hypertension [2], diabetes [3], obesity [4] and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety [5]. In China, urban environments have led to changes in lifestyles that increase the risk factors for noncommunicable diseases [7]. To address urban-related health problems, various preventative measures have been proposed in urban environments [8,9,10]. Providing urban green spaces has become one of the important measures to

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Discussion

Conclusion