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What personal and environmental factors determine frequency of urban greenspace use?

Dallimer, Martin, Davies, Zoe G., Irvine, Katherine N., Maltby, Lorraine L., Warren, Philip H., Gaston, Kevin J., Armsworth, Paul R. (2014) What personal and environmental factors determine frequency of urban greenspace use? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 11 . pp. 7977-7992. ISSN 1660-4601. E-ISSN 1660-4601. (doi:10.3390/ijerph110807977) (KAR id:43264)

Abstract

For many people, urban greenspaces are the only places where they encounter the natural world. This is concerning as there is growing evidence demonstrating that human well-being is enhanced by exposure to nature. There is, therefore, a compelling argument to increase how frequently people use urban greenspaces. This may be achieved in two complementary ways by encouraging: (I) non-users to start visiting urban greenspaces; (II) existing users to visit more often. Here we examine the factors that influence frequency of greenspace visitation in the city of Sheffield, England. We demonstrate that people who visit a site least frequently state lower self-reported psychological well-being. We hypothesised that a combination of socio-demographic characteristics of the participants, and the biophysical attributes of the greenspaces that they were visiting, would be important in influencing visit frequency. However, socio-demographic characteristics (income, age, gender) were not found to be predictors. In contrast, some biophysical attributes of greenspaces were significantly related to use frequency. Frequent use was more likely when the time taken to reach a greenspace was shorter and for sites with a higher index of greenspace neglect, but were unrelated to tree cover or bird species richness. We related these results to the motivations that people provide for their visits. Infrequent users were more likely to state motivations associated with the quality of the space, while frequent users gave motivations pertaining to physical, repeated activities. This suggests that there may be no simple way to manage greenspaces to maximise their use across user cohorts as the motivations for visits are very different.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.3390/ijerph110807977
Uncontrolled keywords: ecosystem services ; psychological well-being ; urban ecology ; urbanization ; motivation
Subjects: Q Science > QH Natural history > QH75 Conservation (Biology)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation > DICE (Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology)
Depositing User: Zoe Davies
Date Deposited: 22 Oct 2014 07:43 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Feb 2021 12:56 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/43264 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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