Emotional Perceptions of Thermal Comfort for People Exposed to Green Spaces Characterized Using Streetscapes in Urban Parks

Benlu Xin, Chengfeng Zhu, Jingjing Geng () and Yanqi Liu ()
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Benlu Xin: School of Business and Management, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Chengfeng Zhu: School of Business and Management, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Jingjing Geng: School of Business and Management, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Yanqi Liu: School of Business Administration, Jilin University of Finance and Economics, Changchun 130117, China

Land, 2024, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-20

Abstract: Thermal comfort is a key determinant ruling the quality of urban park visits that is mainly evaluated by equivalent meteorological factors and lacks evidence about its relationship with emotional perception. Exposure to green space was believed to be an available approach to increase thermal comfort, but this argument still needs verification to confirm its reliability. In this study, about ~15,000 streetscapes were photographed at stops along sidewalks and evaluated for green view index (GVI) and plant diversity index in five urban parks of Changchun, Northeast China. The faces of visitors were captured to analyze happy, sad, and neutral scores as well as two net positive emotion estimates. Meteorological factors of temperature, relative humidity, and wind velocity were measured at the same time for evaluating thermal comfort using equivalent variables of discomfort index ( DI ), temperature and humidity index ( THI ), and cooling power index ( CP ). At stops with higher GVI, lower temperature (slope: from −0.1058 to −0.0871) and wind velocity (slope: from −0.1273 to −0.0524) were found, as well as higher relative humidity (slope: from 0.0871 to 0.8812), which resulted in positive relationships between GVI and thermal comfort evaluated as DI ( R 2 = 0.3598, p < 0.0001) or CP ( R 2 = 0.3179, p < 0.0001). Sad score was positively correlated with THI ( R 2 = 0.0908, p = 0.0332) and negatively correlated with CP ( R 2 = 0.0929, p = 0.0294). At stops with high GVI, more positive emotions were shown on visitors’ faces (happy minus sad scores, 0.31 ± 0.10). Plant diversity had varied relationships with GVI in parks depending on age. Overall, our study demonstrated that using imagery data extracted from streetscapes can be useful for evaluating thermal comfort. It is recommended to plan a large amount of touchable nature provided by vegetation in urban parks so as to mitigate micro-climates towards a trend with more thermal comfort that evokes more positive emotions.

Keywords: thermal comfort; urban park tourism; cooling effect evaluation; emotional perception; quality of life (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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