Investigating the Usage Patterns of Park Visitors and Their Driving Factors to Improve Urban Community Parks in China: Taking Jinan City as an Example

Abstract

Urban community parks have significant benefits for city residents, both physical and spiritual. This is especially true in developing countries, such as China. The purpose of our study is to describe the current situation of the community parks in five main districts of Jinan City while recognizing features of the community parks that influence usage patterns. Our study also means to determine the desired improvements of visitors that promote access to and use of community parks on the basis of the Chinese context. We conducted a survey among 542 community park visitors and obtained valid responses. The findings of respondents show that community parks are mostly used by people over 55 years (34.7%) and children under 10 years (23.6%). The main motives for using community parks are for exercise (24.2%) and to socialize with others (21.6%). The majority of respondents (65.7%) rated the community park as satisfactory and considered only a few improvements needed. Regarding the desired improvements, numerous respondents mentioned adding more physical training facilities (13.3%) and activity areas (7.6%), as well as emergency call buttons in areas frequented by children and older people (7.6%). Furthermore, most of the respondents (79.9%) indicated that they would like to use the community parks more frequently if there is additional progress to make the parks more attractive, cleaner, and friendlier. These results can help park designers, government agencies, and community groups to provide the planning and design strategies for community parks to promote their upgrading in China.