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Effects of urban green spaces on residents’ well-being

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Abstract

Beijing is undergoing continuous urbanization, and considering the individual availability of urban green spaces is essential for alleviating the ecological problems created by this urbanization, especially in relation to improving residents’ well-being. To prove this effect, this article analyzed the social, mental, and physical well-being of current Beijing residents to determine their level of satisfaction, then applied the seemingly unrelated regression model to study how Beijing’s urban green spaces impact this well-being. The result showed that the higher the degree of resident participation with green spaces, the higher their well-being. Such participation includes actions like the frequency at which residents visit a park or green space. A significant inverted U-shaped effect was found between residents’ well-being and their distance from a park or public green space, indicating that residents with the highest well-being live between 1 and 5 km away, and residents with the lowest well-being live over 10 km away. Further, age, education, career status, marital status, years of residence in Beijing, residential area, and average income per month also have a significant impact on residents’ well-being. This study shows that green spaces can have a very positive effect on people’s welfare and provides support for their further promotion.

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Notes

  1. USD1 = CNY6.67.

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Acknowledgements

Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry entrusted project (20170619) and Natural Science Foundation of China (71373024) supported this research. We would also like to express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and editor. Any remaining errors are solely our own.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Ben Ma, Tiantian Zhou, Shuo Lei, Yali Wen & Theint Theint Htun

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  1. Ben Ma
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  2. Tiantian Zhou
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  3. Shuo Lei
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  5. Theint Theint Htun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yali Wen.

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Appendix: The SURE result regarding the impact of residents’ characteristics on well-being

Appendix: The SURE result regarding the impact of residents’ characteristics on well-being

See Table 4.

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Ma, B., Zhou, T., Lei, S. et al. Effects of urban green spaces on residents’ well-being. Environ Dev Sustain 21, 2793–2809 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-018-0161-8

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