The role of urban green space for human well-being

Christine Bertram and Katrin Rehdanz

Ecological Economics, 2015, vol. 120, issue C, 139-152

Abstract: Most people in Europe live in urban environments. For these people, urban green space is an important element of well-being, but it is often in short supply. We use self-reported information on life satisfaction and two individual green space measures to explore how urban green space affects the well-being of the residents of Berlin, the capital city of Germany. We combine spatially explicit survey data with spatially highly disaggregated GIS data on urban green space. We observe a significant, inverted U-shaped effect of the amount of and distance to urban green space on life satisfaction. According to our results, the amount of green space in a 1km buffer that leads to the largest positive effect on life satisfaction is 35ha or 11% of the buffer area. In our sample, 75% of the respondents have less green space available.

Keywords: Human well-being; Life satisfaction; Urban green space (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 Q51 Q57 R20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (83)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:120:y:2015:i:c:p:139-152

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.10.013

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