Perceived accessibility drives how often city residents engage with nature
Green spaces offer essential opportunities for human-nature interactions and deliver ecosystem services that benefit city dwellers. Ecosystem services refer to the benefits that nature provides to humans that are essential for well-being, such as water purification, the production of wood and other raw materials, and the opportunity to enjoy outdoor activities. There are often regional differences between the supply and demand for ecosystem services.
As urbanization accelerates, understanding what drives people to interact with nature is vital in promoting human wellbeing and for sustainable city planning.
Researchers from University of Oulu, Natural Resources Institute Finland and Aalto University analyzed data from Espoo, Kuopio, and Jyväskylä using Public Participatory Geographic Information Systems surveys, where residents marked green areas they visit annually. Study examined how four groups of factors, including socio-demographics, consumed cultural ecosystem services, perceived accessibility, and environmental and infrastructure features affect visit frequency.
The results show that perceived accessibility plays the most significant role in encouraging frequent nature interactions across studied cities. In addition, the infrastructure located within the green areas appeared to play a role in visit frequency: the better the infrastructure, the more often people visited.
On the other hand, people visited forests with highest biodiversity values and sites they perceived peaceful or having beautiful scenery less often. This is probably not because they value them less, but because these places are usually farther away and not so easy to access. Despite less frequent visitation, respondents often highlighted beauty and tranquility as important qualities. Larger, biodiverse, and quiet areas in peri‑urban zones might therefore attract fewer but often longer visits.
“Our research shows that for frequent interactions with nature our subjective perceptions matter as much as the physical characteristics of green spaces,” says Anita Poturalska, Doctoral Researcher and lead researcher of the study. “Our study shows that cities should pay attention not only to providing good infrastructure in green areas, but also to people’s perceptions of accessibility and the potential benefits these areas can offer, as subjective experiences seem to strongly influence visit frequency."
Read more in the new publication: Exploring the subjective and objective characteristics affecting the frequency of human-nature interactions in urban green spaces: a case study from Finland.
The new green space study forms part of Poturalska’s doctoral thesis: Assessing ecosystem services across scales: Potential, supply and demand of provisioning and cultural services. Beyond Finnish urban green spaces, the dissertation examines wood production and consumption trends in Europe and explores wood supply–demand balance across different transport distances.
Overall, Poturalska’s thesis demonstrates the value of mapping trends in wood ecosystem service potential, supply, and demand, and assessing their mismatches through accessibility analysis to support monitoring of European forests and inform more sustainable resource management, while also highlighting the role of perceived accessibility in fostering human interaction with nature in urban and peri-urban areas.