This article was downloaded by: [Monash University Library] On: 06 October 2014, At: 00:28 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Leisure Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Journal Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ulsc20 Psychosocial Outcomes as Motivations for Visiting Nearby Urban Green Spaces a b Robert Home , Marcel Hunziker & Nicole Bauer b a SocioEconomics Group , Research Institute of Organic Agriculture , Frick , Switzerland b Social Sciences in Landscape Research Group , Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL , Birmensdorf , Switzerland Published online: 21 Jun 2012. To cite this article: Robert Home , Marcel Hunziker & Nicole Bauer (2012) Psychosocial Outcomes as Motivations for Visiting Nearby Urban Green Spaces, Leisure Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 34:4, 350-365, DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2012.687644 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2012.687644 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions Leisure Sciences, 34: 350–365, 2012 C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Copyright ISSN: 0149-0400 print / 1521-0588 online DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2012.687644 Psychosocial Outcomes as Motivations for Visiting Nearby Urban Green Spaces ROBERT HOME Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 SocioEconomics Group Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Frick, Switzerland MARCEL HUNZIKER NICOLE BAUER Social Sciences in Landscape Research Group Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL Birmensdorf, Switzerland High-density urban living means that urban green spaces are important nodes of contact with nature. This study examines expected outcomes that motivate people to seek green spaces in urban settings. A sample of Swiss residents were presented with Shin, Kwon, Hammitt, and Kim’s (2005) psychosocial outcomes scale and asked which activities they choose to undertake in nearby natural areas. The most important motivations for visiting nearby green spaces were related to restoration, with social bonding as a desirable side benefit. There were few observable differences between urban and rural residents and level of education attained. Older people are motivated to visit nearby green spaces by the wish to seek social contact while younger people are motivated by the wish to seek escape and to reflect. This study contributes to the understanding of the psychosocial outcomes that residents expect from engaging in an activity in an urban green space. Keywords motivations, psychosocial outcomes, urban green spaces Introduction We live in a rapidly urbanizing world. It is estimated that 47% of the world’s population lived in urbanized areas in 2005, and this amount is expected to rise to 60% by 2030 (United Nations, 2005). In Switzerland, 75% of today’s population lives in cities or towns with an expected increase to 83% in 2030 (United Nations, 2005). As the urban population increases and urban planners are understandably reluctant to allow urban spread into the surrounding areas, cities and towns increase in density. This in turn brings pressure on decision makers to Received 13 October 2009; accepted 8 February 2012. The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Competence Center Environment and Sustainability of the ETH, Zurich Switzerland for supporting the project ENHANCE, of which this study is a part. We are also indebted to the Swiss National Fund and in particular the National Research Program 54 for supporting the BiodiverCity (www.biodivercity.ch) interdisciplinary project led by Marco Moretti at the Swiss Federal Research Institute, WSL, and especially to the survey respondents who freely gave their time. Address correspondence to Robert Home, SocioEconomics Group, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, Ackerstrasse, 5070 Frick, Switzerland. E-mail: robert.home@fibl.org 350 Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 Psychosocial Outcomes from Urban Green Spaces 351 release green spaces within urban areas for development to meet the growing population’s needs for housing and services. Wilson’s (1984) “biophilia” hypothesis proposes that human possess a deep-seated biological need for the connections with the rest of life that are gained contact with nature. The higher density urban living that results in the loss of green spaces to development has potentially significant implications for citizens because of the importance of urban green spaces as nodes of contact with nature (Barthel, Colding, Elmqvist, & Folke, 2005). Preservation and management of urban green spaces require commitment of resources, and there is an increasing demand for evidence of tangible outcomes to justify the resource commitment (Allen & Cooper, 2003). This need to justify the existence and maintenance of areas that enable recreation and leisure experiences led to the concept of benefits-based management (Friedt, Hill, Gomez, & Goldenberg, 2010). Benefits describe an improved condition of an individual, a group, society, or nature (Driver, Brown & Peterson, 1991) and include human, natural, and economic benefits (Friedt et al., 2010). Human benefits include those at an individual level, such as improved physical and mental health, and at a societal level, such as strengthened bonds with family and friends and decreased delinquency (Stein & Lee, 1995). Urban green spaces are an important component of public health because of the positive psychological and physical health effects (Newton, 2007) and the psychosocial outcomes that result from contact with urban nature. Psychosocial outcomes are defined as the responses to a stimulus, in this case urban nature, that involve or relate to both the social and psychological aspects of a person’s life. Psychosocial outcomes are a subset of psychological outcomes that specifically relate to an individual’s psychological development in a social environment and to the results of interactions within that social environment. Such outcomes can be positive, such as family bonding, or negative, such as loneliness (Steed, Cook, & Newman, 2003). This study is explicitly interested in the outcomes that are sought by urban residents and so will concentrate on positive outcomes. The psychosocial outcomes that motivate people to visit urban green spaces and the relationships between individuals’ expected outcomes and the likelihood of their engaging in an activity in an urban green space to achieve those outcomes remain largely unknown. Such knowledge is increasingly vital in the rapidly changing urban environment since the ability of urban green spaces to deliver expected outcomes can influence use frequency and consequent wellbeing of residents by motivating people to engage in activity in the green spaces. The aim of this paper is to identify psychosocial outcomes that motivate people in Switzerland to seek urban green spaces in which to engage in specific activities. A further aim is to examine how the outcomes may be related to demographic characteristics such as age, educational level, and gender, since Payne, Mowen, and Orsega-Smith (2002) found these to be important factors in preferences for outdoor recreation participation. Finally, we seek to identify whether specific activities are preferred when residents seek to attain particular psychosocial outcomes in an urban green space. Outcomes from Contact with Urban Nature Among the beneficial outcomes that people receive from contact with urban nature is the restorative contrast to the built environment that it provides (Hartig & Staats, 2005). Contact with nature can reduce stress (Ulrich, Simons, Losito, Miles, & Zelson, 1991; Ulrich, 1983), restore attention (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989), and create restorative experiences (van den Berg, Hartig, & Staats, 2007; Hartig & Staats, 2005). Several studies have shown that natural environments are more restorative than urban environments (Ulrich, 1983), although most have contrasted stark urban environments with natural scenes (Staats, Kieviet, & Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 352 R. Home et al. Hartig, 2003; Ulrich et al., 1991; van den Berg & Vlek, 1998) or compared the effects of natural views with the effects of windowless rooms (Hartig, Korpela, Evans, & Gàˆrling, 1997). Hernandez and Hidalgo (2005), in examining the restorative effects of nature within cities, found that respondents viewing urban scenes with natural elements returned higher scores on a measure of restorativeness than did those viewing the same scenes without the natural elements. Peron, Berto, and Purcell (2002) found that mixed environments are often perceived as being as restorative as purely natural environments. Common to these studies is that the characteristics of the green spaces provide the vehicle for restoration. Direct physical health benefits have also been reported from physical activity that results from engaging in contact with nature, (Pretty, Peacock, & Hine, 2006), including contributing to reductions in obesity (Department of Health, 2004), increased life expectancy (Takano, Nakamura, & Watanabe, 2002), and general good health (Maas, Verheij, Groenewegen, de Vries, & Spreeuwenberg, 2006). A substantial body of evidence suggests that contact with urban green spaces is beneficial to urban society as a whole. Coley, Kuo, and Sullivan (1997) found that natural elements, such as trees, in semipublic spaces surrounding urban housing promote increased use by, and interaction among, residents. Urban green spaces that are well used have been shown to encourage bonding among neighbors (Kuo, Bacaicoa, & Sullivan, 1998), to provide a greater sense of safety (Kuo et al., 1998), and to reduce urban ills such as crime and violence (Kuo & Sullivan, 2001). Furthermore, Ward Thompson (2002) points out the importance of nature to the individual by claiming that access to some form of nature is a fundamental human need. The implication is that individuals gain some positive outcomes from contact with nature. However, few studies have differentiated between active and passive experiences of urban nature and the desire to obtain beneficial outcomes as a motivation for people to seek urban nature to engage in activities has been considerably less studied. Urban parks tend to be overlooked in discussions and analyses of leisure participation (Veal, 2006), and urban green spaces outside recognized parks tend to be even more overlooked. Motivation for engaging in leisure activities has long been a topic of interest in leisure research and an approach linking settings, activities and outcomes, known as the “experiential approach,” was pioneered by Driver and Tocher (1970). Specifically, the experiential approach suggested that recreation should be understood as an experience in which activities are undertaken in an appropriate setting with the aim of achieving certain psychological and physical goals (Manfredo, Driver, & Tarrant, 1996). Following this theoretical framework, the recreation experience is described as the “bundle” of psychological outcomes that the participant gains from engaging in a particular activity (Manfredo et al., 1996). However the approach taken by Driver and Tocher (1970) and in the following studies in the 1970s and 1980s searched for one-to-one linkages between activities and bundles of psychological outcomes. These studies generally found weak, if any, relationship due to an analysis strategy that precluded finding complex and multiple linkages (Manfredo et al., 1996). Furthermore, many of the studies were undertaken in what Manfredo et al. (1996) describe as “highly natural settings,” which cannot be expected to be the case in urban green spaces. Weber and Anderson (2010) included both regional and urban parks in their case study of experience preferences of visitors and found a core group of common preferences that included enjoying nature, escaping personal/social pressures, escaping physical pressures, and enjoying the outdoor climate. In their study of visitors to urban green spaces in South Korea, Shin, Kwon, Hammitt, and Kim (2005) sought to examine the outcomes that people receive from the use of urban forest park settings. In addition, their study also aimed to examine how the outcomes may be related to park visitors’ personal characteristics such as age, educational level, and gender by following a similar strategy to that of previous examinations, namely by performing a Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 Psychosocial Outcomes from Urban Green Spaces 353 principal components analysis and then seeking to identify group differences according to demographic variables. They classified the psychosocial outcomes that respondents expect to gain by visiting the urban green spaces according to the categories of “learning and self/other relations,” “social and self-development,” and “enjoying nature.” They found that age and level of attained education were positively correlated with the importance of the 16 items while there were no significant differences according to the gender of visitors (Shin et al., 2005). That study, however, has not been replicated in another context, and there was no attempt to link the expected psychosocial outcomes with specific activities undertaken in the green spaces that could lead to the desired outcomes. The psychosocial outcomes that motivate people in Switzerland to seek urban green spaces in which to engage in specific activities remain unknown although benefits based management demands the identification, measurement and documentation of the benefits enabled by recreation areas (Allen & Cooper, 2003; Friedt et al., 2010) including urban green spaces. Methods Participants To addresses this knowledge gap, a study was undertaken in Switzerland using a randomly drawn sample of the Swiss population. Since the aim of the study is to relate expected psychosocial outcomes to demographic variables and use frequencies of activities in urban green areas, a quantitative approach was adopted. Resource restrictions, along with the need for a large and representative sample, meant that a mail-out survey method of data collection was chosen. A survey package, containing a cover letter, the survey instrument (which included sections of questions in addition to those reported in this paper), and a preaddressed and prepaid return envelope was sent to 4,000 households that were randomly selected by the Federal Office of Statistics from across Switzerland, including each of the language regions. The first person in the household aged 16 or over to have a birthday in the calendar year was asked to take part in the survey. The mean age of respondents was 49.5 (std. dev. 21). The place of residence of the respondents was large city, 12.5%; agglomeration of a large city, 18%; small city, 23.2%; town, 22.3%; and out of town, 22.8%. From the 4,000 questionnaires sent, 902 completed questionnaires were returned and 61 were undeliverable, giving an overall response rate of 22.9%. Chi square tests revealed no significant differences between the distribution of the place of residence of the respondents (p = 0.37) and that of the Swiss population (Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2011a) or between the age (p = 0.10) and gender (p = 0.68) distributions of the sample and that of the Swiss population (Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2011b). Because the study did not include a nonrespondent follow-up, we cannot be certain that the results are representative. Generalizations from these data must therefore be made with caution. Measures A scale is needed to measure the positive outcomes that people might expect from visiting green spaces. Notable among the scales developed to measure the outcomes expected from contact with nature is Driver’s (1983) Recreation Experience Preference scale, which is oriented towards recreation in natural areas. However, many people living in urban environments receive the majority of their contact with nature within the city as they go about their lives. Shin et al. (2005) noted that visitors’ outcomes from contact with urban forest parks have been studied less than those resulting from contact with wilderness. Shin and colleagues were unable to find a suitable scale that would be applicable to contact Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 354 R. Home et al. with urban nature. Therefore, they developed the Psychosocial Outcomes Scale to enable them to examine whether desired outcomes from contact with nature may be gained in urban areas and thereby integrated with daily living or work situations. The Psychosocial Outcomes Scale measures the expected positive outcomes of visiting an existing nearby urban green space. Shin et al.’s (2005) psychosocial outcomes scale was derived from a comprehensive study of relevant literature and consultation with recreation professionals. The scale consisted of 16 statements that were considered to represent the range of individual outcomes that could be gained from visits to local green spaces. Shin et al.’s (2005) items were derived from an initial set of 40 items that they had isolated from previous studies, including Driver (as cited in Shin et al., 2005, p. 442), Hartig et al. (1997), Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), and Manfredo et al. (1996). In a transdisciplinary approach, their list was refined in consultation with recreation professionals, park managers, and park administrators to give the final 16 items. Shin et al.’s (2005) scale was included in the survey instrument, except that the status item, which refers to the satisfaction of a person’s need to express their social status, was omitted since it was deemed to be not culturally relevant in the Swiss context. Respondents were asked to indicate, on a 5-point Likert scale, their degree of agreement with statements that were presented in the form “I look for natural places near to where I live . . . ,” followed by the psychosocial outcomes, which are shown in Table 1. The scale was coded from a rating of 1, which indicates strong disagreement to a rating of 5, which indicates strong agreement. To allow deductions as to the activities leading to the desired outcomes, the survey instrument also included a section in which participants were asked to indicate whether TABLE 1 Principal Components Analysis of Responses to Psychosocial Outcomes Scale Outcome Helping others Affiliation Self-enhancement Solitude Item wording: I look for natural places near to where I live . . . . to be of assistance to others. to socialize with others. to use and develop my talents. to do things alone without feeling threatened. Family bonding to experience family togetherness. Natural scenery to experience natural beauty. Learning nature to learn something about nature. Sensitivity for stimulation of my senses. Compensation to experience something new, fresh or unusual. Exercise for physical exercise. Pleasure seeking to experience fun outdoors. Escape challenge to escape from routine life. Escape duty to escape from work pressure. Tranquility to experience peace or calm. Introspection to think about myself. 1∗ 2∗ 3∗ (23.5) (17.6) (14.5) Mean S/D .836 .836 .762 .684 .546 .353 .350 .522 .792 .699 .636 .530 .485 .394 .402 .368 .326 .845 .778 .649 .444 2.73 2.84 2.94 2.83 1.20 1.28 1.26 1.38 3.44 4.72 3.97 3.91 3.43 1.23 0.58 1.09 1.14 1.22 4.12 4.37 3.95 3.76 4.50 3.78 1.12 0.92 1.17 1.26 0.85 1.21 Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. ∗ The number in brackets represents the percentage of variance explained by this component. Psychosocial Outcomes from Urban Green Spaces 355 Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 and how often they seek nearby green areas to engage in each of a list of 11 possible activities that could be undertaken in such areas. The response options were “always,” “often,” “now and then,” and “never.” This section measures a conditional frequency and provides information on the relationship between engaging in an activity and the frequency of looking for a green space as a location to do so rather than on the frequency of green space visitation. An additional option of “I do not do this activity” was provided to distinguish people who never seek a nearby green area to engage in the activity from those who do not engage in the particular activity at all. The list of activities included spending time with children, Nordic walking, cycling, walking, dog walking, jogging, doing nothing, reading, picnicking, ball games, and passive games. Furthermore, respondents were asked a series of demographic questions including age, level of education, and in which settlement type they live. Procedure Completed questionnaire forms were scanned and read electronically into a database using Remark Office software. All statistical calculations were performed using SPSS version 18. The mean responses to Shin et al.’s (2005) psychosocial outcomes scale were calculated and a principal components analysis with varimax rotation was undertaken. Respondents were asked whether they seek out green spaces when they want to carry out a particular activity and the psychosocial outcomes scale was used for each activity to predict the odds that they would seek green areas to practice that activity. Respondents who do not engage in the particular activity were removed from the analysis (indicated in the Table 2 by the participation rate). Those who do participate in each activity were divided into those who “always” or “often” seek a green space to engage in the activity and those who “never” or “now and then” do so. Eleven logistic regression models were developed to identify relationships between responses to the psychosocial outcomes scale and the frequency of engaging in each activity. A linear regression analysis was used to identify relationships between responses to the psychosocial outcomes scale and the “age” and “place of residence” demographic variables. Analysis at the component level rather than at the individual item level would have reduced the number of tests and thereby reduced the likelihood of type 1 error, but is an analysis strategy that brings the disadvantage identified by Manfredo et al. (1996) of masking possible complex and multiple linkages. An aim of this paper is to explore the existence of such linkages so tests were conducted at the item level. Results and Discussion The mean responses, organized in descending order, to each scale item in this study and the mean responses found by Shin et al. (2005) are shown in Figure 1. The standard deviations of the item means in this study range from 0.58 to 1.38. Testing for the significance of differences between means was deemed not to be sensible because there was no reason to assume that any central tendency bias will be consistent across both samples. If one of the samples was more reluctant than the other to use the strong agreement rating, the mean may be comparatively lower, but as an artifact of the bias rather than reflecting less agreement. This bias, however, can be expected to be constant within each sample, so the means are useful in ranking the degree of agreement with the items. Notable in this result is that the ranking of the items according to agreement is similar to the ranking in Shin et al.’s (2005) study. Differences, however, stand out in four items. In the Korean sample, the relative importance of sensitivity and introspection was found 356 H/L (Nagelkerke’s R2) 0.732 (0.15) 0.495 (0.20) 0.289 (0.07) 0.792 (0.08) 0.268 (0.15) Activity (% participation) Time with children (43.5%) Nordic walking (13.5%) Cycling (35.3%) Walking (79.4%) Dog walking (20.2%) 0.001 0.042 0.012 0.001 0.027 0.040 0.003 0.001 0.004 0.037 0.040 0.049 0.016 0.037 0.016 0.006 0.002 P value 1.81 0.81 0.70 2.15 1.40 1.39 0.64 1.44 1.39 0.94 1.25 1.17 1.51 0.80 1.54 0.65 0.60 Exp(B) 0.11 0.12 0.14 0.18 0.18 0.16 0.15 0.09 0.11 0.09 0.12 0.08 0.17 0.11 0.18 0.16 0.16 Std error to experience family togetherness. to experience something new, fresh or unusual. to be of assistance to others. for physical exercise. to experience fun outdoors. to think about myself. to escape from work pressure. for physical exercise. to experience fun outdoors. to think about myself. to experience peace or calm. for physical exercise. to experience natural beauty. to experience something new, fresh or unusual. to learn something about nature. to experience family togetherness. to socialize with others. Motivation variable TABLE 2 Frequency of Choosing Natural Areas to Practice Activities Predicted by Expected Psychosocial Outcomes of Visiting Natural Areas Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 357 0.150 (0.07) 0.758 (0.10) 0.668 (0.11) 0.169 (0.09) 0.060 (0.06) Doing nothing (41.5%) Reading (46.8%) Picnicking (35.9%) Ball games (17.2%) Passive games (17.4%) 0.553 (0.19) Jogging (18.6%) No significant differences 0.001 2.04 0.039 1.30 0.023 1.35 0.030 0.79 0.021 1.21 0.001 1.31 0.004 0.81 0.011 0.83 0.050 0.84 0.013 1.25 0.004 1.23 0.010 1.40 0.004 1.35 0.002 1.27 0.010 1.25 0.046 0.82 No significant differences 0.15 0.13 0.12 0.11 0.12 0.08 0.07 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.07 0.13 0.10 0.08 0.09 0.10 for physical exercise. to think about myself. to experience fun outdoors. to do things alone without feeling threatened. to experience peace or calm. to think about myself. for physical exercise. for physical exercise. to experience fun outdoors. for stimulation of my senses. to do things alone without feeling threatened. to experience peace or calm. to experience fun outdoors. to experience family togetherness. to think about myself. to be of assistance to others. Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 358 R. Home et al. FIGURE 1 Ranking of agreement with psychosocial outcomes scale items by mean response. to be lower than family bonding, while the relative importance of escaping challenge and escaping duty were found to among the highest rated items. A principal component analysis with varimax rotation was carried out to test the dimensionality of the scale. The results of the rotated analysis are shown in Table 1. Examining the results of the principal components analysis, we found that the Helping others, Affiliation, Self-enhancement, Solitude, and Family bonding items loaded against this first component, which was labeled “self/other relations.” This result is reasonably consistent with Shin et al.’s (2005) “learning and self/other relations” component, although the Learning nature item did not load against this component in this analysis. Respondents indicated less agreement with the items forming this factor as motivations for going to natural places nearby to where the respondent lives, with mean responses ranging from 2.73 to 3.44. Although this factor explains the most variance (23.5%), it is the least important motivation for visiting green spaces, and was the component with the lowest means in both this study and in that of Shin et al. (2005). The second factor revealed in this study was labeled “being stimulated by nature” and shares a degree of overlap with Shin et al.’s (2005) third component: “enjoying nature” and with Weber and Anderson’s (2010) “enjoying nature” experience preference. The items (Natural scenery, Learning nature, Sensitivity, Compensation, Exercise, and Pleasure seeking) loaded against this component although the Escape challenge item, which Shin et al. included in their “enjoying nature” factor, did not. This study supports the concept of an “enjoying nature” component and this “being stimulated by nature” component is the most important grouping of motivations with mean responses ranging from 3.43 to 4.72. This result can be interpreted as supporting the biophilia hypothesis in which Wilson (1984) proposes that seeking stimulation by nature is a fundamental human need. The Tranquility, Escape challenge, Escape duty, and Introspection items loaded against the third component identified in this analysis, which can be labeled “escaping” and is the component containing the items with the second highest mean ratings. The Tranquility and Introspection “pull” factor items in this component suggest that there is the contrast inherent in the term escape, since there is an implication of escape to and not just escape Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 Psychosocial Outcomes from Urban Green Spaces 359 from. This escape component is reminiscent of Kaplan and Kaplan’s (1989) “being away” dimension of attention restoration and is in agreement with Hartig and Staats (2005) benefits of urban ecosystems as the restorative contrast to the built environment that urban nature provides. Weber and Anderson (2010) similarly identified “escaping social pressure” as an experience preference in their case study of park use. This result suggests that people actively seek to escape to the natural environments that Ulrich (1983), Ulrich et al. (1991), Staats et al. (2003), and van den Berg et al. (2007) found to be more restorative than urban environments. These results show what outcomes people expect to gain from contact with nearby nature but shed little light on how people achieve these outcomes. The psychosocial outcomes that were found in the regression analysis to be significantly related to particular activities are shown in Table 2. The activities column denotes the activity and the proportion of respondents who frequently seek nearby natural areas in which to engage in the activity. The Exp(B) statistic is the exponentiation of the B coefficient and is effectively the measure of effect size in logistic regression (Garson, 2011). An Exp(B) greater than 1 indicates an increase in being motivated by the expectation of gaining a particular psychosocial outcome will increase the odds that respondents will frequently seek a nearby natural area to engage in the associated activity. The magnitude of Exp(B) is interpreted as the change in the odds ratio associated with a one-unit change in the predictor variable (Garson, 2011). For example, a unit increase in the response to the motivating item “to experience family togetherness” is associated with an increase in the odds to 1.8:1 (0.64/0.36) that people who spend time with children will look for a green space in which to do it frequently. The magnitude of the Exp (B) less than 1 is interpreted similarly. For example, a unit increase in the response to the motivating item “to experience something new, fresh or unusual” is associated with a decrease in the odds to 0.81:1 (0.45/0.55) that people who spend time with children will look for a green space in which to do it frequently. The proportions of respondents who do not engage in the particular activity at all are indicated in the Table 2 by the participation rate. The goodness of fit for each model is indicated by the nonsignificant (>0.05) results of the Hosmer and Lemeshow test (in the H/L (R2) column) and the strength of association indicated by Nagelkerke’s R2 in the same column (in brackets). Hosmer and Lemeshow (2001) report that Low R2 values in logistic regression are the norm and Nagelkerke’s R2 values around 0.1 have been measured in wellfitted models (Garson, 2011). If an adjustment for multiple testing was carried out so that the probability of overall type I error were held at 0.05, the threshold P value would change from 0.05 to 0.003 and the probability of type II error would approach 1. No adjustment was done because the increase in type II error resulting from an adjustment was deemed to outweigh the consequences of any possible type I error: the probability of which is 0.54 without adjustment. Predictive Value of Motivations The predictive value of the motivations to visit nearby green areas for the relative frequency with which green areas are selected as the location to perform the activity can be determined by examination of the results presented in Table 2. Although the activities undertaken in a nearby natural area correlate with specific psychosocial outcomes, the activities are associated with the satisfaction of more than one need. Examining the activities for which respondents are likely to seek an urban green space to achieve a particular psychosocial outcome shows some consistencies. For example, people who are more likely to visit nearby natural areas to engage in the energetic activities of jogging, cycling or Nordic walking tend to be motivated by an expectation of a physical exercise outcome and also by an Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 360 R. Home et al. expectation to experience fun outdoors. Both of these outcomes belong to the component “being stimulated by nature.” In other words, some activities are linked to more than one outcome belonging to the same component. This result supports the findings of Driver and Knopf (1976) who defined the recreation experience as a “bundle” of conceptually similar psychological outcomes desired from engaging in recreation. The findings also show however that respondents are sometimes motivated by expectations of gaining outcomes from more than one component, and which are related to the activities they undertake. For example, people who engage in walking and are motivated by an expectation of achieving the outcome to experience natural beauty, which belongs to the component “being inspired by nature,” are more likely to choose a nearby natural area in which to walk. At the same time, however, they are also motivated to do so to experience peace or calm, which belongs to the component “escape.” Another example is that people who engage in reading and are motivated by the outcome for stimulation of their senses, which belongs to the component “being inspired by nature,” are more likely to choose a nearby natural area to read while they are also motivated to do so by the outcome to do things alone without feeling threatened, which belongs to the component “self/other relations.” The motivation to satisfy more than one psychosocial outcome was found to be related to the frequency of visiting an urban green space to engage in each of the activities with the exceptions of spending time with children and dog walking. Respondents who engage in spending time with children and who are motivated by the expectation of experiencing family togetherness are more likely to visit an urban green space. However, respondents who engage in spending time with children and are motivated by the outcomes to experience something new, fresh, or unusual or to be of assistance to others are less likely to visit an urban green space to engage in that activity. This suggests that people who are spending time with their children and are motivated by these outcomes will seek another setting to do so. Similarly, dog walkers who are more motivated by the outcomes to experience family togetherness or to socialize with others will seek a setting other than urban green spaces to walk their dog. The results show that there are purposeful relationships that have systematically motivated respondents to visit urban green spaces to engage in their chosen activities. However, while there are distinct multidimensional relationships found in this study, not all outcomes are linked to all activities and some outcomes are not specifically linked to any. For example, the desire to escape, although an important psychosocial outcome, was not attached to any particular activity. Furthermore, there was no specific link between motivations to achieve any of the listed outcomes by visiting a nearby green area and the likelihood of visitation to urban green areas for people who engage in some activities, namely ball games and passive games. Influence of Demographic Variables A regression analysis of the relationship between the responses of the Psychosocial Outcomes Scale and where the respondent lives on the urban/rural gradient revealed that there was no significant relationship with any of the scale variables with the exception of item 10: to experience something fresh or unusual (p = 0.015, Beta = .114). People are motivated by the desire to achieve essentially the same psychosocial outcomes from contact with nearby nature, regardless of whether they live inside or outside a city. This has implications for how natural nearby green spaces need to be to provide desired outcomes, since those living further from the cities could be expected to have more natural places nearby. That no differences were found indicates that the relative contrast provided by the nearby nature Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 Psychosocial Outcomes from Urban Green Spaces 361 provides the psychosocial outcomes rather than a generalizable set of characteristics. This logic is supported by the finding of a significant relationship between the place of residence and the item to experience something fresh or unusual, which indicates that people who live in urban areas are more likely to be motivated by the idea of experiencing something new than people who live in the country. This makes intuitive sense since people who live in the country are likely to have a greater degree of familiarity with natural areas than those who live in the cities, so even more natural areas may be seen as not fresh or unusual, despite the attraction created by their relative contrast. A further regression analysis found that level of education was significantly related to only items 7 (to learn something about nature, p = 0.03, Beta = 0.101) and 13 (to socialize with others, p = 0.006, Beta = 0.145). Respondents who had attained a higher education level were more likely to be motivated by the desire to learn something about nature and to socialize with others than people with lower education levels. This result is in contrast to the findings of Shin et al. (2005), who found significant differences in all of the outcome items between visitors who had attained different levels of education. A regression analysis of the relationship between the responses of the psychosocial outcomes scale and the age of respondents found that age was significantly related to the items shown in Table 3. Payne et al. (2002) and Yilmaz, Zengin, and Yildiz (2007) found that younger people are more likely to visit city parks in Cleveland, Ohio (United States) and Turkey, respectively, and concluded that age plays a significant role in the frequency of park use. Similarly, Shin et al. (2005) found age to be a significant predictor of responses to the psychosocial outcomes scale and stated that older visitors to urban forests were more likely to rate the outcomes as important than those who were younger. The significance of age has been supported by this study; however, the positive correlation between age and each of the items on the psychosocial outcomes scale was not found. The results of this study show that older people are more likely than younger people to be motivated to visit a nearby green space by the desire to learn something about nature, be of assistance to others, socialize with others, and do things alone without feeling threatened. On the other hand, older people are less likely than younger people to be motivated to visit a nearby green space by the desire to escape from routine life, escape from work pressure, experience fun outdoors, experience family togetherness, and to think about themselves. We can conclude that older people tend to be motivated to visit nearby green spaces by the wish to seek self/other relations while younger people tend to seek escape in both senses of the word. TABLE 2 Significant Items in a Regression Analysis of Age and Responses to the Psychosocial Outcomes Scale Item No. 2 5 6 7 8 11 12 13 15 Item P value Beta to escape from routine life to escape from work pressure to experience fun outdoors to learn something about nature to experience family togetherness to think about myself to be of assistance to others to socialize with others to do things alone without feeling threatened 0.002 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.028 0.001 0.001 0.003 0.001 −0.127 −0.198 −0.153 0.213 −0.081 −0.176 0.155 0.138 0.131 362 R. Home et al. The life cycle of visitors may be responsible, in part, for the results obtained in this study and it is possible that these are related to the work phase of the people. The minimum age for participation in this study was 16 while there was no upper limit, so all of the respondents were of working age or older and many of the participants may have been retired. An explanation for the relationships between age and motivations may be that working people may seek escape from their everyday stresses, while retired people seek more of a social function in urban green spaces. Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 Conclusions The study of motivation for engaging in leisure activities has a long tradition in the outdoor recreation literature initiated by Driver and colleagues in the 1970s with the experiential approach that links settings, activities, and outcomes. The topic has attracted less research in recent years, perhaps due to discouragement by the difficulties in finding correspondence between bundles of outcomes and activities. Attention to psychosocial outcomes was given by Shin et al. (2005) in their study of visitors to urban forest parks although there has been little attempt to link expected psychosocial outcomes with specific activities undertaken in the green spaces that could lead to such outcomes. This study addresses the knowledge gap by exploring the relationships between each of a range of 11 activities and a set of 15 possible psychosocial outcomes by developing 11 linear regression models to examine relationships between expected outcomes and the frequency of participation in an activity in an urban green space. This study has shown that people engaging in a particular activity will choose a green space in which to do it with the aim of achieving multiple outcomes simultaneously. While this result supports the findings of Driver and Knopf (1976) in that participants seek bundles of psychological outcomes from their recreation experience as desired from engaging in recreation, it also shows that the relationships are complex and multidimensional. The results of this study show that respondents are motivated to visit urban green spaces by the expectation of achieving psychosocial outcomes that are both varied and specific to their chosen activities. Similarities were found between this Swiss sample and the Korean sample studied by Shin et al. (2005) in both the order of the outcomes that were rated as being most important and in the categories revealed by the principal components analysis. Three categories of outcomes—stimulation by nature, escape, and self/other relations—summarize outcomes that motivate people to visit nearby green spaces and were identified in this study. The most highly rated category of outcomes was to be stimulated by nature, while self/other relations was the lowest rated category in both samples. These similarities possible reflect that both samples stem from highly industrialized countries and application of the scale in other contexts may shed light on whether the similarities are indeed universal or simply common to respondents from industrialized countries. A further limitation of this study is that, while we have assessed the importance, relative to each other, of selected psychosocial outcomes that people expect to obtain by visiting a nearby green space, it was beyond the scope of this study to examine actual outcomes that people receive upon visitation. The study was based on self-reported visitation frequency, and no data were collected on actual visitation. It will be the challenge of future research to measure outcomes that people actually achieve rather than assessing outcomes that they expect to achieve. Similarly, this study did not examine the outcomes that nearby green spaces are unable to deliver but that could be provided if nearby natural places were designed differently. In other words, a future research aim could be to determine which landscape elements provide the optimum characteristics for satisfying the desired Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 00:28 06 October 2014 Psychosocial Outcomes from Urban Green Spaces 363 psychosocial outcomes. A further limitation of the study is that no data were collected on the work status of the respondents. The results of this study identified differences in the expected outcomes that motivate people to visit urban green spaces according to the age of the respondents. However, it is possible that the age responses in this study may have been a proxy for employment status and the reported difference may have been a difference between working and nonworking people. These limitations notwithstanding, this study contributes to the understanding of the psychosocial outcomes that residents expected from engaging in an activity in an urban green space. 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