Urban park restorative effects in an integrated model of positive emotion and leisure involvement moderation

Abstract

Abstract Urban parks are critical spaces for residents to alleviate stress and restore psychological well-being. To investigate the differential impact mechanisms of built and natural environments on residents’ restorative effects and their psychological moderating pathways, this study utilizes the survey data from five urban parks in Chengdu, and applies the questionnaire survey method to analyze the mechanism and contextual conditions of the role of different environmental types on the restorative effects of residents through hierarchical linear regression. It further analyzes the moderating effects of residents’ positive emotion and leisure involvement in the above process; and provides empirical reference value for constructing urban leisure scenes with high restorative effects. The result show that in the influence process of built environment to restorative effect, the moderating effect of leisure involvement is greater than positive emotion. While in the influence process of natural environment to restorative effect, the moderating effect of positive emotion and leisure involvement are similar. Both built environment and natural environment can positively influence the residents’ restorative effect. Residents’ positive emotion and leisure involvement have positive moderating effects on this influence process. The results of this research can be a reference to create an urban recreational environment with restorative effect.