Understanding recreation demands and visitor characteristics of urban green spaces: A use of the zero-inflated negative binomial model

Abstract

This study aims to understand recreation demands and visitor characteristics of urban green spaces. The renovation of large urban green spaces has been scheduled due to the aging facilities in the Sapporo city area, northern Japan. Owing to budget limitations, however, a decision has been made to perform a specific type of extensive renovation depending on the existing environmental settings, facilities, and current recreation uses. To accomplish the renovation, it is essential to conduct an examination of a spatial layout of urban green spaces available for providing equitable recreation opportunities that meet recreation demands and visitor characteristics. This study focuses on 29 large urban green spaces in the Sapporo city area and aims to understand the above issues using an individual travel cost method. The web-based survey conducted in December 2017 targeted residents of the Sapporo city area, and 1068 respondents were used for analyzing. Recreation demands for a total of 21 large urban green spaces were estimated using a zero-inflated negative binomial model, which resolved the problem of excess zeros in the collected data. The mapped results showed that few large urban green spaces had high consumer surplus in the northwestern area. Further, visitor characteristics (gender, age, having small children, owning a car or having a driver’s license, walking and/or running, and observing animals and/or plants) were related to the number of visits to these urban green spaces.