User Perception of Public Parks: A Pilot Study Integrating Spatial Social Media Data with Park Management in the City of Chicago

Yiwei Huang, Zhixin Li and Yuhan Huang
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Yiwei Huang: Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Zhixin Li: Geospatial Sensing and Modeling Lab, Lyles School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Yuhan Huang: Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: User-generated content (UGC) is a relatively young field of research; however, it has been proven useful in disciplines such as hospitality and tourism, to elicit public opinions of place usage. In landscape architecture and urban planning, UGC has been used to understand people’s emotions and movement in a space, while other areas and additional functions are yet to be discovered. This paper explores the capability of UGC in revealing city-scale park management problems and the applicability of social media as a future tool in bridging visitor feedback to city parks and recreation department staff. This research analyzed the spatial characteristics and patterns of Google Maps review quantity, rating score, and review comments. The results of this pilot study indicate the spatial and structural features of the Chicago parks and demonstrate distribution problems, financial investment priority concerns, park usage characteristics, and user preferences of the park attributes. Findings affirm that user-generated online reviews can be used as an alternative and self-reporting data source to effectively assess the natural performance and users’ experience of city parks and can potentially serve as an evaluative tool for public park management.

Keywords: user-generated content (UGC); park and recreation; Google Maps; online views; park experience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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