Can Indoor Residents Perceive Green and Blue Spaces in Communities as Posted Sentiments? A Verification in Nanchang

Abstract

Ecological infrastructures (EIs), such as public and urban green and blue spaces (GBSs), have been well demonstrated to benefit visitors’ mental well-being. Experiences in community GBSs may also evoke positive emotions for their residents. In this study, 54 communities in Nanchang were chosen as objective sites, where landscape metrics of GBSs were remotely evaluated. A total of 2105 local residents’ facial expressions (with happy, sad, and neutral emotions) were obtained from Sina Weibo. Inhabitants showed more net positive emotions (happy minus sad) in cold seasons, and females smiled more frequently than males. Newly constructed communities with houses for sale had larger areas of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and built-up index compared to communities with no houses for sale. Neither the availability of houses for sale nor housing price had any effect on facial expression scores. Poisson regression revealed significant coefficients (β) of positive emotions with largeness of green space (GS) and blue space (BS). Overall, BS had a stronger contribution (β, 0.6–1.1) to residents showing positive emotions relative to GS (β, −2.45–0.89), whose area ratio of NDVI increased the frequency of showing happiness. We recommend constructing GBSs with over 0.68 km2 of GS and over 2000 m2 of BS per community, where the area ratio of GS should be more than 70% of the total if the goal is to evoke more happiness in residents.