مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد تصدیق ارزشمند بودن پارک های شهری با اطلاعات شادی – الزویر 2018

Contemporary urban life generates numerous physical illnesses and chronic stress that lead to disease and cancer. Residents who live in large cities (e.g., New York, Tokyo, London, and Seoul) are likely to experience such physical stresses that decrease individual subjective well-being (Lewis & Booth, 1994; White, Alcock, Wheeler, & Depledge, 2013). Scholars have emphasized that urban parks, green spaces, and recreational places are important for providing residents with physical and emotional benefits in a variety of ways (Grahn & Stigsdotter, 2010). More specifically, people can relieve mental fatigue in urban green spaces, which serve as a resource for physical activities as well as relaxation and restoration (Booth, Roberts, & Laye, 2012). There is much empirical evidence to support the idea that natural amenities (e.g., urban parks, forests, and green belts) in an urban area contribute to the quality of life of urban dwellers. For example, natural amenities not only function as important environmental services such as purifying air and water, filtering noise and wind, and stabilizing microclimate in urban contexts, but also provide social and psychological services that improve residents’ subjective well-being (Chiesura, 2004). Urban parks also offer opportunities for contact with other people, which enhances social engagement and cohesion of those who live alone or are isolated (Pfeiffer & Cloutier, 2016). In spite of the recognition of these important roles of urban parks, less scientific attention has been paid to the effects of urban parks on the subjective well-being of urban dwellers. In addition, most previous studies have not addressed the relationship between urban parks and human well-being as a concept that encompasses the physical, mental, and social domains (van Kamp, Leidelmeijer, Marsman, & Hollander, 2003). They have only focused on specific functions of urban parks, such as the improvement of physical health (Maas, Verheij, Groenewegen, Vries, & Spreeuwenberg, 2006; Mitchell & Popham, 2007), reductions in stress (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008), and increases in recreational activities (Santos, Mendes, & Vasco, 2016). This leaves a gap in our understanding of how providing urban parks affects urban residents’ subjective well-being, especially their overall happiness. Recently, scholars have begun to use happiness data measured using one question to assess experienced life satisfaction, in order to examine how neighborhoods or environmental factors affect individual subjective well-being. (Brereton, Clinch, & Ferreira, 2008; Dolan & Kahneman, 2008; Frey, Luechinger, & Stutzer, 2010; Kahneman & Sugden, 2005; Levinson, 2012). They have argued that subjective wellbeing (Individual self-reported “subjective well-being”, “happiness”, or “life satisfaction” can be used as an empirical approximation to “experienced utility”, see MacKerron, 2012) is affected not only by individual characteristics such as age, marital status, income, and physical health, but also by living environment characteristics such as public services, transportation infrastructures, and natural amenities. Although increasing attention has been paid to the function of urban parks on the subjective well-being of urban dwellers in various cities (Ambrey & Fleming, 2014; Scopelliti et al., 2016), there is still not enough understanding of the effects of urban parks on residents’ overall happiness. Particularly, there is only a few studies to connect the benefits of urban parks and individual happiness using self-reported happiness data (Ambrey & Shahni, 2017). A more comprehensive assessment of urban parks based on individual subjective well-being with additional case studies focusing on large cities is worthwhile for reconsidering the importance of urban parks for residents in large urban areas (Cloutier & Pfeiffer, 2015).