The Relationship between Habitat Diversity and Tourists’ Visual Preference in Urban Wetland Park

• Published in: Land (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 12; p. 2284
• Main Authors: Zhang, Jiani, Zhu, Xun, Gao, Ming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.12.2022
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Aquatic habitats; Big Data; Biodiversity; Construction; Ecological research; Ecology; Environmental aspects; Environmental psychology; habitat diversity; Habitats; Impact damage; Landscape; Landscape architecture; mapping of habitat units; Parks; Parks & recreation areas; Preferences; Social aspects; Social media; Social networks; Surveys; Tourists; tourists’ visual preference; Urban ecology; urban wetland park; Wetlands; Wilderness; China
• ISSN: 2073-445X; 2073-445X
• DOI: 10.3390/land11122284

The increasing number of visitors to wetland parks has caused varying degrees of impact on wetland life. How to reduce the damage to wetland biodiversity caused by recreational activities in parks, improve tourists’ recreational experience, and balance the relationship between the two are urgent problems that need to be solved. Therefore, four urban wetland parks were selected as subjects for this study. The present study utilized social media data to study the diversity of urban wetland habitats and tourists’ wetland landscape preferences from the spatial dimension and explore the relationship between the two. This is a practice different from the traditional ecological research (survey, measurement, monitoring, questionnaire survey) of wetland habitat diversity assessment. The research revealed the following findings: (1) There was a significant positive correlation between habitat saturation and positive artificial elements, such as landscape structures and aerial walkways; (2) Landscape complexity is negatively correlated with landscape instantaneity and wilderness degree; (3) Habitat diversity was negatively correlated with landscape instantaneity but positively correlated with naturalness and positive artificial elements. This study proposes wetland habitat construction as a strategy to optimize the management of habitat diversity in urban wetland parks and enhance its ecological education function.