Xiaomin Xiao

Urban parks serve as vital public spaces for recreational activities. However, key scientific questions remain regarding how, and to what extent, socio-demographic characteristics influence visitors’ perceptions of different types of cultural ecosystem services (CESs). Two further questions concern how park visitor typologies and their characteristics can be systematically identified, and how the demand preferences of different visitor groups for CESs can be understood. Addressing these questions is essential for urban park tourism management. This study employed a questionnaire survey to analyze visitors’ perceptions of CESs provided by Zhujiang Park in Guangzhou, China. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the influence of socio-demographic factors on perceptions of CESs. Cluster analysis and correspondence analysis were applied to identify visitor typologies and their characteristics. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) was used to determine the perceptual preferences of different visitor groups for CESs. The results identified key socio-demographic factors affecting visitors’ perceptions of CESs. For example, while occupation had no significant effect on visitors’ perceptions of CESs, education showed the strongest positive association with the perceived importance of recreation and entertainment. Furthermore, three distinct visitor typologies were identified: individual, social, and family visitors. These groups exhibited significant differences in their demand for inspiration, educational value, recreation and entertainment, and safety. The findings confirm the diverse demand for CESs among urban park visitors and highlight the need for tailored management strategies. They also offer insights for policymakers seeking to foster a more inclusive and equitable park tourism environment in which urban green spaces meet the varied needs of different visitor groups.

The scale of abandoned traditional railways in China and worldwide has been progressively increasing. While Western developed countries have generally focused on optimizing the utilization of such disused railway resources, research and practical efforts concerning the ecological restoration of abandoned railways in China remain in their nascent stages. This study proposes an evaluation framework for assessing the ecological restoration effectiveness of abandoned railways, incorporating public satisfaction as a key metric. The framework addresses a critical gap in conventional ecological restoration assessments, which often overlook the social perception of ecosystem services, while also filling a research void in the ecological benefit evaluation of abandoned railways. Regulating and supporting services were quantified using market price, replacement cost, and equivalent factor methods. Cultural services were evaluated through a modified travel cost method, incorporating social media analysis and sentiment analysis to quantify and weight public satisfaction. As a case study, this research examines the ecological restoration of the abandoned Zhangjiakou section of China's first railway, the Jing-Zhang Railway, now repurposed as the Zhangjiakou Industrial Culture Theme Park. Applying the proposed framework, the ecosystem service value of the restored railway in 2023 was estimated at 1.565855 million CNY, with cultural services contributing the highest proportion (74.99%). Additionally, public satisfaction demonstrated measurable improvement. The findings validate the efficacy of ecological restoration strategies for abandoned railways and provide direct empirical support for policymakers in the conservation, utilization, and optimized management of such resources.

In the context of high-quality development, scientifically and objectively assessing regional ecosystem health (EH) is important for ecological civilization. However, the commonly used EH assessment framework typically neglects intrinsic connections, mutual adaptability, and coordination among interrelated indicators. The coupling coordination model was utilized to improve the classic pressure–state–response assessment (PSR) model. The carbon footprint, water footprint, landscape pattern, and response status of the Manas River Basin were used to construct a medium-scale regional EH assessment framework linking natural ecosystems with human socioeconomic elements. A quantitative assessment was conducted on the EH conditions of the Manas River Basin from 2000 to 2020. Over the past 21 years, the EH conditions of the Manas River Basin have fluctuated upward. The ecosystem health index (EHI) increased from 0.18 to 0.37. Compared with the conventional PSR model, the coupling coordination pressure–state–response model (CC–PSR) better reflected the fluctuations in EH conditions caused by “pressure”, “state”, and “response” level changes. In the early stage (2000–2006), increasing human activity strongly pressured the regional ecosystem, limiting EH improvements. The increase in “pressure” was reflected in the increasing trends of the water footprint, carbon footprint, and ecological footprint. During the middle to late period (2009–2020), as the “response” level improved, the regional EH condition continued to increase, and the EHI stabilized between 0.29 and 0.38. Ecosystem resilience improvements and human afforestation projects enhanced the “response” level, but their impacts were noticeably delayed. Over the past 21 years, regional landscape diversity, landscape connectance, and landscape contagion have remained high. The well-maintained landscape pattern has laid the foundation for consolidating and improving the regional EH. The EHI is increasing; its fluctuations stem from periodic fluctuations in the regional water yield and carbon sequestration capacity, which are constrained by the basin climate and vegetation coverage. This study provides a scientific model for basin EH assessment.

In the context of urban renewal, residents have presented elevated expectations for the quality of urban parks, necessitating the optimization of parks’ multifunctional landscapes. Transforming residents’ preferences for landscape services into a prioritized index for multifunctional landscape renewal poses a significant challenge. This study addresses this research gap by integrating importance–performance analysis (IPA) with residents’ perception evaluations of landscape services. We establish an index system to evaluate perceptions of urban park landscape services. By employing the importance–performance analysis framework, we identify landscape service types that exhibit high importance but low satisfaction levels, thereby establishing priorities for multifunctional landscape renewal. Using Guangzhou’s urban parks as a case study, our findings reveal variations in users’ demands for different landscape services and differences in demand among various user groups for similar services. Users assign utmost importance to safety services while expressing the highest satisfaction with physical and mental health or microclimate regulation services. Significant disparities exist between middle-aged/elderly groups and young people regarding perceptions of social interaction, waste disposal, and sense of belonging services. Our results demonstrate that IPA analysis can elucidate priorities for multifunctional landscape renewal, facilitate public participation in improving urban park landscapes, and provide decision-making support for optimizing these landscapes.