Back to My Former Graduate Student Advisee

Pawinee Iamtrakul, PhD (Doctor, Civil Engineering) Saga University, September 2005. Thesis title: Development of a Quantification Framework to Assess the Interaction of Recreational Behavior and Preference of Park Users

Abstract:

The urbanization of many cities has been proceeding at a rapid pace that resulted to the degradation of urban environment. Public parks as representative of green areas play vital roles to balance the needs for both conservation and development. To provide insights for sustainable city policy, the translation of the intangible recreational benefit of park services into tangible value is necessary as such that the contributions of public parks' benefits can be interpreted by citizens and policy makers. In order to achieve the goal of public service, this study attempt to integrate public preference from park visitors to reflect the need of the community that is the main stakeholders, who consume public park service in the form of recreational opportunities and amenities. Study of behavior and preference of public park visitors may lead for action to interrelate the local view into park planning process. This study attempts to investigate behavior and preference of park users by establish a new quantification framework. This valuation framework can reflect user's point of view by gathering the public opinion from the interview survey during their recreational time in the park. Consequently, the analysis was performed through the integration of park users' behavior and their preferences and provides an alternative way to assess their interaction.

The study concentrated on the recreational travel and activity characteristics that influence to the behavior and preference of park users. The new quantification framework was developed through the interaction of behavior approach together with preference approach by propose a method to quantify the interaction from park users' opinion. For behavior approach, this study established an unconventional determinant factor to enable for the comparison between the significant of travel behavior influence on activity selection behavior of park users through the integrated expense index. Based on this index, the result indicated that the integrated expense has the value lower than one. This reasonable finding revealed the useful result due to the reason that the objective of park visit is for recreational purpose, therefore park users would value their important on activity greater than their travel for park visit. Therefore, the attractiveness of park plays an important role for park users to select park to perform a variety of activity with different pattern of park utilization. Additionally, due to the relationship of travel and activity from integrated expense model, it can be seen that there is the linkage between accessibility and attractiveness of park. Therefore, as travel behavior of park users is the representative of accessibility of park, this study developed a model that can be further examined from this relationship through an alternative approach of threshold distance. Based on this approach, the service area of park can be redefined and reflected from the minimum acceptable distance of users' point of view. Subsequently, the factors that influence park users' behavior on the decision to select recreational location through different modal usage can be assessed. By applying this model, the different factors that effect to the different threshold distance to visit park are then classified into three categories; socio demographic, activity and travel characteristics. From the application of this model, the finding results is verified that not only the allocation of park affect to the life style of residential to visit park in different patterns but also the attractiveness and accessibility of park are the key elements that need to be considered with diverse groups of users. In addition, the improvement of park service in term of attractiveness and accessibility of park need to be concerned with the special target group of service such as old people, family, daily users, etc.

Together with the preference of park users that was focused on the interaction of both level of satisfaction and willingness to pay for maintenance and management quality of service, the perception of users' opinion can be captured and quantified into explanatory value. Base on the analysis through users' preference approach, it is confirmed users who spend more expenditure and time spending to visit park and do activity would contribute less amount of WTP. The relationship of users' behavior within this group was implied that they were recreational users rather than daily users since the latter group would have their residential within the proximity area to park and are more accessible to visit park often. Therefore, the consideration should be given to improve the quality of park service that will not only provide the condition of service to satisfy users but also increase the number of daily users. This is due to the reason that the users' who have more appreciation to consume the service and have potential to visit park habitually would participate on public concern than others. This might be from the reason that they feel high satisfaction and ownership to this kind of public space that would induce to the more responsible for public work.

Consequently, the interaction of behavior and preference approach can be converted to preference value through a new index that is preference value factor. This determinant could play a significant role as an excellent linkage to interrelate between behavior and preference of park users in particular pattern of park usage. The useful results reflected the fact that for many groups of users' characteristic, and pattern of park visits, the more consideration should be compensated or provide more alternative and/or complement to group of users who has high preference value factor. Since they value benefit from recreation behavior in term of activity and travel expenditure in a very high rate compare to their preference, on the other hand they might not appreciate the existing condition of service at that time. It might be due to the reason that many other aspects of park as a public space contribute to their negative experience, including psychological connections with nature, physical topography and geography, a sense of one's body and physical capabilities, and the proximity between the park and several different communities. It means that they hesitate to participate on public concern that might be from the reason that they perceived low ownership to this kind of public space and have no responsible for public work. The improvement and maintenance the condition of park service in the satisfy condition to users can not be longer ignored that was obviously verified through this interaction index.

In order to support the useful methodological framework of this approach due to a wide variety classification of parks in the study area, three public parks in Saga city, Japan (Saga Castle Park, Kono Park and Shinrin Park) were selected as representatives of more than 30 public parks served for the community of less than 200 thousands population. Several useful findings reflect the valuable result of analysis based on parks user behavior and preference that has been obtained through the quantification framework of this study as well as variety of socio-demographic and economic aspects of park users could be understood and compared. In addition, this functional approach could highlight the diversified behavior and preference of different social groups of park users in terms of choice and opportunity to obtain the service in term of accessibility, role of public parks in the community and reflect the social needs of park users. This result indicates the need to improve accessibility according to the community needs and attractiveness of public parks.

Additionally, this result also provides useful information for maintain high-quality of service of public parks as well as improve the sastisfaction of public parks. This valuable approach could be utilized as local information to be integrated into allocation of suitable plan for current and future policy for public park service improvement for livable city.