Human Interactions with Greeneries in an Urban Environment: Exploring Determinants of Motivations and Constraints of City Dwellers’ Interaction Towards Green Spaces

The existing scholarship on urban studies has given less emphasis on the interactions of the urban populace with their surrounding greeneries and their patterns, as well as the determinants that influence the interaction. To fill this existing gap, the present study examines the factors, that is, how age and occupation determine people’s interactions with the existing greeneries in the city of Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, utilising rigorous primary data collected through structured questionnaires employing a cluster random sampling method. The results show that the dweller’s average frequency of visiting an urban park (8.85 days per year) and participation in urban afforestation activities (2.96 days per year) is relatively low, indicative of limited people engagement with greeneries. Age and occupation emerged as significant factors contributing to this low park visitation. College and high school students emphasised the pressures of education, including home tuition and educational assignments. At the same time, working professionals indicated formidable time constraints exacerbated by weekday commitments and familial responsibilities even on the weekends to visit parks. It is because working professionals indicated that they don’t have time during the week or even on the weekends to visit urban parks because of their jobs, managing their families and offices. Moreover, regarding citizen willingness to participate in afforestation activities, environmental reasons predominate motivation (61.88%), followed by recreational (40.09%), social (29.79%), aesthetic (21.28%), commercial (2.08%), and other factors (8.32%), respectively. Lastly, the findings suggest that older people know more about plant diversities and their utilities than younger generations.