Influence Mechanisms of Community Sports Parks to Enhance Social Interaction: A Bayesian Belief Network Analysis.

Yawen Sun,Qixiao He,Jize Shen,Shaohua Tan

doi:10.3390/ijerph19031466

Abstract

Urban green spaces provide multiple ecosystem services to improve human health and well-being. Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are recognized as the most important services for urban residents through the key of social interaction. Researchers commonly acknowledge the function of community sports parks to enhance social interaction. Nevertheless, existing studies generally do not pay enough attention to the influence mechanisms of community sports parks and social interaction, especially the different types of spaces in community sports parks, which could be due to the complex feature of social interaction. This paper selects three community sports parks in Chongqing as the case study, uses BBN to identify the influence mechanisms of three common types of spaces (fitness equipment space, path space, and sports court space) in community sports parks and social interaction, aiming to explore how community sports parks enhance social interaction. The results indicated that sports court space such as basketball court and badminton court enhanced social interaction best; however, the spaces farther away from the park entrances were generally less effective in enhancing interaction. All these three types of sports spaces showed the influence mechanism of “Spatial Factors-Activity Type-Social Interaction”, while differences existed in the specific spatial influencing factors. The findings highlight that based on the BBN obtained in this study, the threshold range of spatial factors could be adjusted to enhance the effect of community sports parks on social interaction.

Highlights

Urban green spaces provide multiple ecosystem services to improve human health and well-being [1]
The social interaction features of the three type spaces were analyzed in terms of the level of crowds congregate and engagement with the park, in which the level of crowds congregate was ranked as “sports court space (0.550) > path space (0.503) > fitness equipment space (0.426)”, and the level of engagement with the park was ranked as “ sports court space (4.69) > fitness equipment space (4.42) > path space (4.27)”
Analysis of the location of the spatial units showed that the crowds tended to congregate and interact near the park entrances, for example, the fitness equipment spaces with better congregate level were the unit of NO.1, NO.2, NO.24, and NO.26; the path spaces were the unit of NO.6, NO.7, NO.20, NO.22, and NO.32; the sports court spaces were the unit of NO.3, NO.4, NO.5, NO.17, NO.19, and NO.20, which were relatively close to the entrances rather than the inside of the park

Summary

Introduction

Urban green spaces provide multiple ecosystem services to improve human health and well-being [1]. “Ecosystem services” (ES) are the values and benefits that people derive from functioning ecosystems [2,3]. Vegetation in urban green spaces control climate, buffer noise, and filter air pollutants [4]. These ecosystem regulation services may prevent humans from diseases and promote healthy behavior through the provision of cultural ecosystem services (CES) [5,6]. CES are recognized as the most important services for urban residents which represent some of the most familiar and personal experiences of environment that people encounter in the cities [7–9]. Among CES, social interaction is regarded as a key to understanding the role of ecosystems in breaking down social barriers and bringing residents together [10]

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Discussion

Conclusion