Characteristics of Urban Recreational Parks and Visitation for Environmental and Social Benefits: The Case of Six Selected Parks in Addis Abab

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Date

2022-06-09

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Urban recreational parks have a role in providing environmental and social benefits. These benefits are not yet used due to lack of effective intervention that improve urban park characteristics which can attract the parks visitor’s interest as well as improve the environmental benefits. This study is aimed at investigating the role of park characteristics in providing environment and social benefits. For this, the study employed descriptive and inferential research design with mixed approaches. The data were collected from primary and secondary data sources. The primary data sources were a survey of 385 park visitors, three key informant interview, and researcher observation in the six recreational parks. The secondary data sources were from studies, government documents, online and off-lines materials. Sample recreational parks in the city were selected through a stratified purposive sampling basing the recreational park size and administrational level. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential analysis method. The qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. Based on visitors’ response, it was found that recreational parks have environmental (78%) and social (65%) benefits. Among the park characteristics in the sampled parks, vegetation and climate comfort were the highest whereas accessibility, management and maintenance were ranked the lowest by park visitors. In addition, the findings indicated that better facilities, events in the parks and vegetation were among the major characteristics of park that attract visitors. Furthermore, it was found that 37.7% park visitors were visiting parks weekly. Moreover, 43.9% recreational park visitors usually spent 1 to 2 hours in recreational parks and about 82% of visitors preferred to come in weekends. The park visitors ranked the city parks and had set the criteria for ranking which is important to understand what attract visitors to visit a certain recreational parks. These findings indicated that the park characteristics has a relation with park visitation which has an impact in achieving environmental and social benefits from recreational parks.

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Keywords

Recreational, Park, Visitation, Social, Environmental, Benefits

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