Assessing Residents’ Perception of Ecosystem Services in Urban Green Spaces in the Rapidly Urbanizing Himalayan City of Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), India

Urban green spaces (UGSs) serve multiple purposes. Most existing research uses questionnaires to capture how residents use and perceive various UGS ecosystem services (ESs), without documenting what is available and accessible to residents and without identifying underlying patterns. This study addresses this gap by first documenting UGSs in Srinagar, India, and then understanding their usage patterns and ES perceptions by using advanced machine learning. After documenting and mapping all 237 UGSs across Srinagar city, we surveyed 420 respondents across 20 selected UGSs, from April to July 2025, using a semi-structured questionnaire. We then applied a self-organizing map (SOM) to identify patterns, non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) to picture them and permutation-based analysis to recognize key factors. The results show three distinct user groups, while NMDS showed that education, proximity to UGSs and visitation frequency were the main driving factors behind these three groups. There were clear contrasts between the three groups. Young students frequently visited UGSs and identified them as critical for psychological restoration and emotional well-being (Cluster I). Individuals with no formal education, older adults and housewives who live nearby UGSs utilize them for physical activity, child supervision and social cohesion (Cluster II). The engagement of middle-aged government employees and farmers/laborers was characterized by a utilitarian appreciation, and they emphasize the economic value of UGSs, specifically resource harvesting and livelihood support (Cluster III). These findings underscore the importance of considering differences between user groups when planning and managing UGSs.