scholarly journals Visitors’ emotional expression in urban forest parks: What can we know about on-line facial images from the Social Networking Services?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoming Guan ◽  
Honxu Wei ◽  
Xingyuan He ◽  
Zhibin Ren ◽  
Xin Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Urban Forests ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Networking Services ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
The Social ◽  
Forest Parks ◽  
Facial Images

Urban forests can attract visitors by the function of well-being improvement, which can be evaluated by analyzing the big-data from the social networking services (SNS). In this study, 935 facial images of visitors to nine urban forest parks were screened and downloaded from check-in records in the SNS platform of Sina Micro-Blog at cities of Changchun, Harbin, and Shenyang in Northeast China. Images were recognized for facial expressions by FaceReaderTM to read out eight emotional expressions: neutral, happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and contempt. The number of images by women was larger than that by men. Compared to images from Changchun, those from Shenyang harbored higher neutral degree, which showed a positive relationship with the distance of forest park from downtown. In Changchun, the angry, surprised, and disgusted degrees decreased with the increase of distance of forest park from downtown, while the happy and disgusted degrees showed the same trend in Shenyang. In forest parks at city center and remote-rural areas, the neutral degree was positively correlated with the angry, surprised and contempt degrees but negatively correlated with the happy and disgusted degrees. In the sub-urban area the correlation of neutral with both surprised and disgusted degrees disappeared. Our study can be referred to by urban planning to evaluate the perceived well-being in urban forests through analyzing facial expressions of images from SNS.

scholarly journals Visitors’ emotional expression in urban forest parks: What can we know about on-line facial images from the Social Networking Services?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haoming Guan ◽  
Honxu Wei ◽  
Xingyuan He ◽  
Zhibin Ren ◽  
Xin Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Urban Forests ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Networking Services ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
The Social ◽  
Forest Parks ◽  
Facial Images

Urban forests can attract visitors by the function of well-being improvement, which can be evaluated by analyzing the big-data from the social networking services (SNS). In this study, 935 facial images of visitors to nine urban forest parks were screened and downloaded from check-in records in the SNS platform of Sina Micro-Blog at cities of Changchun, Harbin, and Shenyang in Northeast China. Images were recognized for facial expressions by FaceReaderTM to read out eight emotional expressions: neutral, happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and contempt. The number of images by women was larger than that by men. Compared to images from Changchun, those from Shenyang harbored higher neutral degree, which showed a positive relationship with the distance of forest park from downtown. In Changchun, the angry, surprised, and disgusted degrees decreased with the increase of distance of forest park from downtown, while the happy and disgusted degrees showed the same trend in Shenyang. In forest parks at city center and remote-rural areas, the neutral degree was positively correlated with the angry, surprised and contempt degrees but negatively correlated with the happy and disgusted degrees. In the sub-urban area the correlation of neutral with both surprised and disgusted degrees disappeared. Our study can be referred to by urban planning to evaluate the perceived well-being in urban forests through analyzing facial expressions of images from SNS.

scholarly journals Facial Expressions of Visitors in Forests along the Urbanization Gradient: What Can We Learn from Selfies on Social Networking Services?

Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongxu Wei ◽  
Richard J. Hauer ◽  
Xin Chen ◽  
Xingyuan He
Keyword(s):  
Social Networking ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Social Networking Services ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Friedman's Test ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Forest Parks ◽  
Northern City

People’s satisfaction towards the experience in forests is one of most important feedbacks that forest park managers need to meet positive visitors’ experiences. Although the drawbacks of questionnaire methodology are obvious for data collection from self-reported scores at the landscape scale, few alternative methods have been proposed. In this study, nine urban forest parks along the urbanization gradients in three capital cities of Northeast China were targeted to investigate their visitors’ selfies from social networking services (SNS) by assessing facial expressions. A total of 935 photos with location records were obtained from the SNS platform of Sina Micro-Blog in a social hot-event of ‘Golden Week Holidays of National Day of China’ of 2017. Images were recognized by FireFace software to assess scores of neutral, happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and contempt expressions. Data were ranked in descending order and analyzed by Friedman’s test, correlation analysis, and Poisson regression. Visitors in downtown-forests showed fewer negative expressions at the most northern city than at the southern most one. The negative expressions tended to be alleviated with the increasing distance of forest parks from downtown. However, when the distance reached over 10 km no geographical effect was found. Female visitors showed positive emotional expressions to urban forests while male visitors showed no response. In conclusion, using data from SNS, this study found an experience in forest park less than 10 km from the downtown of a northern city resulted in female visitors showing the most positive expressions.

scholarly journals The Accuracy Validation of FireFACE Software in Analyzing Facial Expressions of Urban Forest Visitors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongxu Wei ◽  
Ping Liu
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Urban Forests ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Shenyang City ◽  
Validation Test ◽  
Tree Population ◽  
The Difference

The construction of sustainable urban forests follows the principle that well-being in people is promoted when exposed to tree population. Facial expression is the direct representation of inner emotion that can be used to assess real-time perception in urban forests. The emergence and change of facial expressions for forest visitors are in an implicit process. The reserved character of oriental races strengthens the requirement for the accuracy to recognize expressions through instrument rating. In this study, a dataset was established with 2,886 randomly photographed faces from visitors in a constructed urban forest park and a promenade at summertime in Shenyang City at Northeast China. Six experts were invited to choose 160 photos in total with 20 images representing one of eight typical expressions as angry, contempt, disgusted, happy, neutral, sad, scared, and surprised emotions. The FireFACE ver. 3.0 software was used to test hit-ratio validation as the accuracy (ac.) to match machine-recognized photos with those identified by experts. According to Kruskal-Wallis test on the difference from averaged scores in 20 recently published papers, contempt (ac.=0.40%, P=0.0038) and scared (ac.=25.23%, P=0.0018) expressions cannot pass the validation test. Therefore, the FireFACE can be used as an instrument to analyze facial expression from oriental people in urban forests but contempt and scared expressions cannot be identified.

scholarly journals Facial expressions of Asian people exposed to constructed urban forests: Accuracy validation and variation assessment

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. e0253141
Author(s):  
Haoming Guan ◽  
Hongxu Wei ◽  
Richard J. Hauer ◽  
Ping Liu
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Urban Forests ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Accuracy Measurement ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Variation Assessment ◽  
Asian People

An outcome of building sustainable urban forests is that people’s well-being is improved when they are exposed to trees. Facial expressions directly represents one’s inner emotions, and can be used to assess real-time perception. The emergence and change in the facial expressions of forest visitors are an implicit process. As such, the reserved character of Asians requires an instrument rating to accurately recognize expressions. In this study, a dataset was established with 2,886 randomly photographed faces from visitors at a constructed urban forest park and at a promenade during summertime in Shenyang City, Northeast China. Six experts were invited to choose 160 photos in total with 20 images representing one of eight typical expressions: angry, contempt, disgusted, happy, neutral, sad, scared, and surprised. The FireFACE ver. 3.0 software was used to test hit-ratio validation as an accuracy measurement (ac.) to match machine-recognized photos with those identified by experts. According to the Kruskal-Wallis test on the difference from averaged scores in 20 recently published papers, contempt (ac. = 0.40%, P = 0.0038) and scared (ac. = 25.23%, P = 0.0018) expressions do not pass the validation test. Both happy and sad expression scores were higher in forests than in promenades, but there were no difference in net positive response (happy minus sad) between locations. Men had a higher happy score but lower disgusted score in forests than in promenades. Men also had a higher angry score in forests. We conclude that FireFACE can be used for analyzing facial expressions in Asian people within urban forests. Women are encouraged to visit urban forests rather than promenades to elicit more positive emotions.

scholarly journals PROBLEMS OF DEFINING A LEGAL STATUS OF URBAN FORESTS IN RUSSIA

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-197
Author(s):  
O. A. Lavrischeva
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Urban Forests ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Territorial Planning ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Forest Parks

The paper considers norms of the Russian legislation on urban forests. The main problems of the legal regulation of urban forests within the Russian Federation have been identified and analyzed. The author pays special attention to the absence of a definition of the "urban forests" concept and the criteria for referring forest plantations to urban forests that make it possible to delineate urban forests from other plantations within the settlements, including forest parks. The author points to the fact that there is no criteria for power delineation to protect and use urban forests as well as a clear functional structure of urban forest management at the level of the subjects of the Russian Federation. There is also legal uncertainty about referring forest located in settlements that are not cities to forests. All these gaps in the Russian legislation cause certain difficulties in law enforcement practice. Based on the analysis, the author suggests ways of managing urban forests in the current socio-economic situation in Russia. First of all, it is necessary to introduce a number of clarifications at the legislative level: to regulate the legal regime for using urban forests established for forest park areas in accordance with the requirements of the Russian Federation Code, to establish the norm which will oblige local authorities while preparing and approving the documents concerning territorial planning, to include land plots on which urban forests are located, into recreational areas or zones of specially protected areas. The author believes that these changes in the forest legislation will help to develop and preserve urban forests as a reliable environmental and legal guarantee for the constitutional right of citizens to have a favorable environment.

scholarly journals The Relationship between Landscape Metrics and Facial Expressions in 18 Urban Forest Parks of Northern China

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1619
Author(s):  
Ping Liu ◽  
Mengnan Liu ◽  
Tingting Xia ◽  
Yutao Wang ◽  
Peng Guo
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Landscape Metrics ◽  
Green Infrastructure ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Green Space ◽  
Urban Forest ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Urban Green Spaces ◽  
Forest Parks

Urban forests are an important green infrastructure that positively impacts human well-being by improving emotions and reducing psychological stress. Questionnaires have been used frequently to study the influence of forest experiences on mental health; however, they have poor controllability and low accuracy for detecting immediate emotions. This study used the alternative approach of facial reading, detecting the facial expressions of urban forest visitors and their relationships with the landscape metrics. Using the microblogging site, Sina Weibo, we collected facial photos of 2031 people visiting 18 different forest parks across Northern China in 2020. We used satellite imagery analysis to assess the elevation and pattern sizes of green space and blue space areas. Age and location were taken as independent variables affecting facial expressions, which were categorized as happy or sad. With increases in green space and intact park areas, people showed a higher frequency of expressing happy scores. The results showed that the forest experience frequently elicited positive emotions, suggesting that creating and maintaining urban green spaces enhance people’s quality of life.

scholarly journals Assessing the Ecological Value of an Urban Forest Park: A Case Study of Sinhua Forest Park in Taiwan

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 806
Author(s):  
Wan-Yu Liu ◽  
Yo-Zheng Lin ◽  
Chi-Ming Hsieh
Keyword(s):  
Urban Forest ◽  
Contingent Valuation Method ◽  
Urban Forests ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Socioeconomic Background ◽  
Tobit Regression ◽  
Ecological Value ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Ecological Conservation

Urban forests offer multiple functions: they can balance negative effects from the environment and provide the public with a place for leisure and recreation. Hence, urban forests are crucial to urban ecology and have been widely studied. In addition, relevant study results were applied for policymaking in urban development and forest park management. This study evaluated the ecological value of the Sinhua Forest Park and examined whether the socioeconomic background of participants influences their willingness to pay (WTP) for ecological conservation. Questionnaires were distributed to visitors in the Sinhua Forest Park in Tainan, Taiwan, and the payment card format of the contingent valuation method was employed to evaluate the ecological value. The results showed that the visitors had an annual WTP of $22.01 per person. However, when samples with protest responses were excluded, the WTP rose to $24.58. By considering the total number of visitors of a year, the total ecological value was $1,426,964.14/year and reached $1,593,257.31/year after excluding the protest samples. This study also analyzed participants’ within-variable socioeconomic background (e.g., gender and education) and discovered that male participants who are aged 60 years or older, with an education level of senior/vocational high school, and those who visited green spaces two to three times per week presented a high WTP score on average. A Tobit regression model was employed for examination, and the results indicated that participants’ education and frequency of visiting green spaces significantly influenced their WTP for the ecological conservation of the Sinhua Forest Park.

EXPRESSION OF SOCIAL DIMENSION: THE DISTRIBUTION OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SERVICES FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM IN TERNOPIL REGION

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-85
Author(s):  
Serhii Puhach
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Mobile Communications ◽  
Penetration Rate ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Social Networking Service ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Social Networking Services ◽  
The Social

The intensive development of new information and communication technologies (ICT) has led to major changes in society. The widespread use of smartphones and mobile communications has allowed today to create new programs and services to improve human life. This development changes the established habits of human communication, the relationship between society and the environment. A social networking service (SNS) is a service (on a website or through a mobile application) that allows users to share a personal profile and establish contacts with other users. Social networking services affect the territorial organization of society and can be used for the development of both settlements and entire territories to make their development more sustainable and balanced. The study of social networking services is currently on the rise. The joint efforts of many sciences (sociology, psychology, geography, mathematics, statistics, computer science, etc.) are needed to understand the subject essence of the phenomenon and to analyze data. Approaches to the study of social networking services can be divided into three large groups: 1) in terms of human relations and relationships; 2) in terms of content distributed on the network; 3) in terms of spatial aspects of the functioning of the social network. In Ukraine, there are no detailed studies of the spatial aspects of the spread of social networking services at the local level. In the Ternopil region, there is a pattern of concentration of the majority of Facebook and Instagram users in the largest cities, namely Ternopil, Chortkiv, Berezhany, Kremenets. Buchach, Borshchiv, Zalishchyky, Terebovlya, and Shumsk districts stand out among the districts by the number of users. An important indicator that characterizes the spread of social networking services is the penetration rate of the social network, which is calculated as the ratio of the number of users in a certain territory to the population living in it. Cities of regional subordination differ in terms of the penetration rate of SNS. The highest values were observed in Chortkiv, Ternopil, Kremenets cities. The penetration rate of social networking services in the administrative districts of Ternopil region is much lower. A relatively high rate (over 30%) was recorded in Buchach, Berezhany and Shumsk districts. Extremely low penetration rate (less than 5%) is in Zbarazh, Chortkiv, Zboriv districts which are adjacent to the cities of regional subordination. The social networking service Instagram is inferior to Facebook in level of development, and its main users are mainly young people. However, in the territories where the rate of Facebook penetration is the lowest in the region (Ternopil, Zbarazh, Chortkiv, Zboriv districts), the predominance of Instagram is noted. Thus, the main patterns of spatial distribution of SNS’ Facebook and Instagram in Ternopil region are: concentration of users in the largest cities, especially in the regional center Ternopil City (half of Facebook and Instagram users in the region); the number of users is proportional to the population in the territorial unit; small number of users and low penetration rate of the SNS’ in the administrative districts adjacent to the cities of regional subordination Ternopil and Chortkiv; among administrative districts, higher indicators of social network development are typical for northern and southern districts in comparison with central ones. Key words: social networking service (SNS), penetration rate of the SNS, Facebook, Instagram, Ternopil region.

scholarly journals Residents’ Spatial Preference for Urban Forest Park Route during Physical Activities

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (22) ◽  
pp. 11756
Author(s):  
Mengmeng Cai ◽  
Chuyun Cui ◽  
Lin Lin ◽  
Shuyi Di ◽  
Zheng Zhao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Forest ◽  
Life Quality ◽  
Cognitive Maps ◽  
Physical Activities ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Spatial Image ◽  
Spatial Preference ◽  
Forest Parks

Urban parks positively affect the life quality and health of urban residents as well as the environment where they live. When it comes to the design of a future urban forest park, it is necessary to consider the protection of ecological environment, landscape sustainability and practicability. This study explored residents’ spatial preference for urban forest parks based on preference survey data. According to the rating scores obtained for four urban forest park routes during physical activities, this study used cognitive maps and multinomial logit models to figure out the potential influencing factors affecting residents’ spatial preference while they engage in physical activities. The results suggest that forest routes are still the primary choice for urban residents. Although familiarity with the spatial image preference for urban forest parks varied from person to person, residents’ choice of route shows certain commonalities, which was reflected in the sequential cognitive maps obtained from them. In addition, residents’ route preference is influenced by their exercise habits, environmental preference and residential location. There is also a certain correlation between residents’ preference and their characteristics. This study provides additional information for planners, developers, engineers, architects and foresters in building a more suitable environment that is aesthetically appealing and ecologically sound for physical exercising.

scholarly journals THE POTENTIAL OF URBAN FOREST PARK FOR SUSTAINABLE CITY

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noralizawati Mohamed ◽  
Noriah Othman ◽  
Mohd Hisham Ariffin
Keyword(s):  
Urban Forest ◽  
Future Generation ◽  
Urban Greening ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Forest Park ◽  
Research Institution ◽  
Planning Department ◽  
To Come ◽  
Forest Parks ◽  
The Town

The potential of Urban Forest Park and publics' views are clearly pertinent in urban greening and sustainability, yet they are often ignored by certain countries. In line with this, the Town and Country Planning Department and National Landscape Department had taken steps by developing more urban parks and urban forest parks to enhance the quality and sustainability in urban environment. The study was conducted at FRIM(Forest Research Institution of Malaysia) with 375 respondents participated in this study. It is found that the respondents' evaluation on environmental, social and physical contribution at study area is associated with great and intense values for city sustainability. Public opinion and reason to come to the study area should be taken into account by professionals since they are the users and responsible to ensure thesustainability of urban forest for future generation. Even though the overall percentage of survey showed that public gave good expectation, however, the small percentage could be an eye opener as they assumed the existing setting will face big challenge to sustain in the future.

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