Abstract

To better understand the influence of urban green infrastructure (UGI) on outdoor human thermal comfort, a survey and physical measurements were performed at the campus of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in spring and summer 2015. Three hundred eighty-nine respondents were interviewed in five different green spaces. We aimed to analyze people’s thermal comfort perception and preference in outdoor urban green spaces, and to specify the combined effects between the thermal environmental and personal factors. The results imply that non-physical environmental and subjective factors (e.g., natural view, quiet environment, and emotional background) were more important in perceiving comfort than the actual thermal conditions. By applying a linear regression and probit analysis, the comfort temperature was found to be 22.2 °C and the preferred temperature was at a surprisingly high 35.7 °C. This can be explained by the observation that most respondents, who live in temperate regions, have a natural tendency to describe their preferred state as “warmer” even when feeling “warm” already. Using the Kruskal-Wallis H test, the four significant factors influencing thermal comfort were people’s exposure time in green spaces, previous thermal environment and activity, and their thermal history. However, the effect of thermal history needs further investigation due to the unequal sample sizes of respondents from different climate regions. By providing evidence for the role of the objective and subjective factors on human thermal comfort, the relationship between UGI, microclimate, and thermal comfort can assist urban planning to make better use of green spaces for microclimate regulation.

Highlights

  • The accelerated population growth in urban areas, associated with the increase of impermeable concrete surfaces, industrial pollution, and destruction of natural habitats, negatively changes the urban microclimate (Watson and Johnson 1987; Akbari et al 2001; Grimmond 2007)

  • To examine the effect of thermal adaptation, we investigated the impact of thermal sensation based on the responses to seven questions on behavior adjustment, purpose of coming, exposure time, visiting frequency, previous thermal environment and activity, and thermal history

  • The results showed that Bslightly warm^ and Bwarm^ (+1 and +2) sensation were predominant for thermal sensation vote (TSV), whereas people who felt Bcool^ and Bcold^ (−2 and −3) were rare

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Summary

Introduction

The accelerated population growth in urban areas, associated with the increase of impermeable concrete surfaces, industrial pollution, and destruction of natural habitats, negatively changes the urban microclimate (Watson and Johnson 1987; Akbari et al 2001; Grimmond 2007) The impacts of these changes on microclimate and human thermal comfort have negative effects on human health and received increasing attention (Campbell-Lendrum and Corvalán 2007; Zhao et al 2011; Franck et al 2013). Knez et al (2009) proposed a conceptual model to reveal direct and indirect effects of a given place on human thermal responses They found that long-term memory significantly influenced

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