城市绿色空间的需求侧效应：吸引力如何帮助克服健康行为的主观障碍

The contribution of Urban Green Spaces (UGSs) to public health is a critical topic. Existing research predominantly examines the relationship between enhanced UGSs characteristics — such as availability, accessibility, and usability — and residents’ health, highlighting how these attributes can mitigate objective barriers to health behaviours in UGSs from a supply-side perspective. However, few studies have explored the demand-side effects of UGSs, particularly in how potential visitors overcome subjective barriers to health behaviours. This study hypothesizes that Perceived UGSs Quality (PUGSQ), including attractive qualities like environmental aesthetics and open space publicness, promotes health behaviours in UGSs (HB_UGS) by enhancing residents’ self-efficacy in overcoming subjective barriers (OBSE). An online cross-sectional study was conducted in China in 2020, employing covariance structure analysis to examine the mediating role of OBSE between PUGSQ and HB_UGS. The findings indicate that augmenting PUGSQ bolsters potential visitors’ belief in their ability to overcome subjective barriers to visiting UGSs or participating in activities therein, thereby promoting sustained and regular health behaviours. The mediation model is applicable across varying activity intensities and whether activities are undertaken alone or in groups. OBSE demonstrates a partial mediating effect in the low-activity-intensity group, and full mediating effects in the medium-high-activity-intensity group, the lone activity group and the collective activity group. These results suggest that, in addition to the well-documented passive role of UGSs in health promotion from a supply-side perspective — which predominantly engages visitors’ willpower resources — UGSs can also assume a more active role from a demand-side perspective. This active role involves mobilizing visitors’ desire resources and potentially lessening the strain on their willpower resources, thus offering a more nuanced understanding of UGS’s influence on health behaviours. The position of UGSs in health promotion thus rises from ‘just nice to have’ to ‘essential to have’.

城市绿色空间在公共健康上的贡献是一项关键的议题。既有文献主要研究了例如可供应、可达性和可用性等城市绿色空间特征的提升与居民健康之间的关系，这些研究立足供应侧视角，强调上述特征如何为居民在城市绿色空间开展健康行为时降低客观阻碍。 但是，尤其在涉及到潜在使用者如何克服健康行为过程中的主观阻碍时，少有研究探索城市绿色空间在使用者需求侧的作用。本研究提出假设：感知中具有吸引力的城市绿色空间品质，包括环境美学和空间开放性，通过增强居民克服主观阻碍的自我效能，从而促进其在城市绿色空间中的健康行为。 为了检验该假设，一项横断面研究在中国线上开展，并在协方差结构分析下，检验了在感知的城市绿色空间品质与其中健康行为之间，克服主观阻碍的自我效能所起到的中介作用。 研究结果显示，感知的城市绿色空间品质的提升，联系着潜在使用者在访问和使用城市绿色空间时对自己能够克服主观阻碍该信念的增强，进而促进可持续的、规律性的健康行为。 该中介模型适用于不同强度的活动，也适用于独自的活动和结伴的活动。克服主观阻碍的自我效能在低活动强度组具有部分中介效应，在中高活动强度组、独自活动组和结伴活动组具有完全中介效应。 这些结果意味着，城市绿色空间在健康促进中的角色，除了通过占用使用者的意志力资源在供应侧扮演证据翔实的被动角色之外，还可以在需求侧承担更加主动的角色。 该主动角色调动了使用者的欲望资源，或有助于减轻其意志力资源的压力，从而为城市绿色空间在促进健康行为上的贡献提供了更精微的解读。这使得城市绿色空间在健康促进中的地位从“锦上添花”提升为“雪中送炭”。