Study of residents’ willingness to construct community gardens in the post-epidemic era

Investigation from Wuhan

Abstract

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, people who had experienced social isolation during the epidemic became more concerned about the function of public open spaces in their communities. In developing China, community gardens have not been included in the urban planning system. This study explores whether community residents support the construction of community gardens on public land for collective gardening activities and the reasons for the formation of their willingness. The subjects of this study are residents of three urbanized residential communities in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Questionnaires were distributed in the communities via the internet to assess residents’ willingness to build community gardens. Three hundred eighty-two completed and valid questionnaires were collected. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were used to evaluate the categorical variables. The results showed that 82.5% of respondents expressed support for the construction of community gardens, while 17.5% held the opposite view. Respondents who were female, elderly, and had minors in the household had a higher percentage of supportive statements. Living in different communities, education levels, and monthly income had no significant impact on the results. Community evaluation and horticultural experience had a significant impact on the results. Finally, we discuss the main reasons for willingness. In addition, we found that not all supporters were willing to spend money or time on community gardens. The results of this study are significant for community management decision-making and spatial planning.

Introduction

Community public space is the primary carrier of urban residents’ activities and provides a place for social interaction and entertainment (Wu, Qin et al., 2018). The global outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 has brought significant changes to people’s leisure patterns (Bayrsaikhan, Lee et al., 2021). Community quarantines during the epidemic have left many people confined to the neighbourhoods in which they live, and community public spaces are becoming a scarce resource for people to get outdoors and escape being locked down at home (Ghanem, Ahmad et al., 2021). With the efforts of scientists, vaccines are available worldwide, marking the coming of the post-epidemic era (Huang, Liou et al., 2021). It is essential to consider what kind of open spaces can meet the spiritual needs of residents for green spaces and social interaction, as well as the physical demands of outdoor activities to ensure a healthy life. Of particular interest is that edible urban public resources can help recover from pandemic crises and build the resilience of cities to future disruptions (Sardeshpande, Rupprecht et al., 2021).

A community garden is an open space (Datta, 2016; Ghose and Pettygrove, 2014b; Milbourne, 2021), managed and operated by local community members to grow vegetables or flowers (Guitart, Pickering et al., 2012). This definition emphasizes the communal nature of the community garden space and the diversity of its management and operation. Community gardens promote community well-being by influencing the social environment (Dubová and Macháč, 2019). There is a growing body of literature on community gardens that demonstrates their benefits, such as providing food (Alaimo, Packnett et al., 2008), education (Bendt, Barthel et al., 2013), and benefiting health (Van den Berg, van Winsum-Westra, et al., 2010). Community gardens still provided food for residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, and recent studies have shown that gardening activities can promote mental health by reducing outbreak-related stress (Theodorou, Panno et al., 2021). Because of these recognized benefits, community gardens are increasingly valued, especially in the post-epidemic era.

Early in the history of urban civilization, the courtyard spaces of private houses often had vegetable gardens (Zheng, Akita et al., 2022). In the context of China’s rapid urbanization and the increasing density of living spaces, it is difficult for urban dwellers to have their vegetable gardens, and there is less and less outdoor space for family gardening. With more than half of the world’s population living in cities and cities being centres of economic growth and innovation (Oh and Gim, 2021), rapid economic development has brought a lot of pressure to Chinese urban residents (Wu, Qin et al., 2018). The lack of green space, severe environmental pollution, and the fast pace of the city affect the way of life of the people. Many of the newcomers to the city during this period of rapid urban expansion may be rural farmers who maintain the act of farming (He and Zhu, 2018). For them, gardening is a survival need and a spiritual affair, and if they can farm in a community garden, it satisfies their need for food and enriches them spiritually.

Presently, the development model of community gardens in China is more oriented toward urban settlements where residents participate in the horticultural labour and work together to build shared gardens. Residents use the public open space as a recreational opportunity and transform its recreational function into an act of vegetable gardening. The term community in community gardens emphasizes a group of people living together in an area, expressing the concept of a group, and community gardens are defined as an expression of green space, emphasizing collective behaviour on public land.

However, community gardens often occupy contested land use space (Schmelzkopf, 1995). Community residents have never agreed on their attitude towards community gardens. Just as the motivations for gardening in community gardens are constantly changing (Armstrong, 2000), there are no uniform standards of construction and management of community gardens. Gardening on common community land can lead to conflicts between community residents with different interests.

At present, research on community gardens is mainly concentrated in developed countries, and the construction of community gardens in rapidly developing cities in China is still in its infancy. Previous studies have shown the positive impact of community gardens. Community garden programs are more effective than programs based on horticultural education in improving community life and reducing stress (Lee, Jang et al., 2022). Community gardens promote community-engaged research (Kou, Zhang et al., 2019), and residents’ connection to the outside world (Fielder and Marsh, 2021). In addition, urban dwellers are aware of the benefits that community gardens can provide for themselves and their neighbourhoods and cities (Torres, Prévot et al., 2018), and community resident groups can overcome barriers to community garden development by engaging in social networks (Ghose and Pettygrove, 2014a). Social inclusion can be sown for marginalized residents through community gardens (Mmako, Capetola et al., 2019). Meanwhile, some recent literature has also reported the informal gardening activities of urban residents. Most people willing to support community gardening, but who do not want to contribute, are not substantially opposed to this activity (He and Zhu, 2018). More than half of the participants in “informal” community garden practice have experience in agricultural practice (Wei and Jones, 2022). More collaborative and inclusive community governance is needed to deal with the conflict caused by the occupation of community open spaces by Chinese community horticultural activists (Zhu, He et al., 2020).

However, most studies of community gardens have tended to report on the motivations of gardeners in formal or informal community gardens in built environments. To our knowledge, few studies have investigated the willingness of residents in different communities to build community gardens. The involvement of the local community is considered to be one of the keys to successful planning and management of the environment and human space (Baek and Joo, 2021; Jun, Lee et al., 2019), and the construction of community gardens requires the participation of residents. Therefore, this study aimed to find out whether community residents support the construction of community gardens on community public land by surveying three communities in the main urban area of Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei Province. The specific objectives of this study were: (1) to examine residents’ attitudes toward the construction of community gardens, (2) the influence of demographic characteristics on residents’ attitudes, (3) the influence of the evaluation of the greenery and infrastructure of the neighbourhood on attitudes, and (4) the reasons why residents supported or did not support the construction.

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides new evidence for the implementation of community garden programs. Second, it can help urban policymakers and managers better understand the motivations and barriers to urban residents’ participation in gardening activities. Third, it helps to optimize management models related to community garden practices. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explains the research methodology, including the questionnaire design and the analysis strategy. Section 3 describes the findings of the study in five aspects: the current status of community gardening activities, the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents, the respondents’ evaluations of the community and their experiences of gardening, the views of the supporters, and the views of the non-supporters. In section 4, the results are discussed individually in the context of the post-epidemic era, and future research directions are suggested. Finally, conclusions and implications are provided in Section 5.

Research Methods

Study area

The study area is located in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China (113°41′-115°05′ E, 29°58′-31°22′ N) and the study area is shown in Figure 1. By the end of 2019, Wuhan is spread over 8,569.15 km2, with a resident population of about 11.21 million and a regional GDP of 1.62 trillion CNY (WUHAN STATISTICAL YEAR, 2020). As one of the critical national central cities and as an important strategic city for the rise of central China, Wuhan has seen a significant expansion of its built-up area under China’s rapid urbanization process, providing residents with a large number of fully functional residential communities of commercial housing. There has also been a large influx of migrants previously living in rural areas into these communities.

Figure 1. The location of the study area

As urbanization accelerates and living standards improve, residents of Wuhan are increasingly aware of the importance of urban agriculture to the city’s economic, social and ecological systems (Wang, Yuan et al., 2022). Wuhan was the city with the highest number of confirmed cases in China during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. The outbreak had a significant impact on production and livelihoods in the city. Wuhan was under strict lockdown for 76 days (Qian and Hanser, 2021). Therefore, a feasibility study on community gardens in Wuhan in the post-epidemic era would be instructive.

Three communities were selected for the study: Fudi Cuiwei community, Hongjun south community, and Golden-City 17th block community (after this called ‘F-community’, ‘H-community’ and ‘G-community’ respectively), with the basic information shown in Table 1. The criteria for selecting the three communities were guided by the following principles: (1) the geographical locations of the communities in the main urban area and in different administrative districts; (2) the construction age and green space ratio should be differentiated; (3) a diverse composition of community residents is required; (4) the gardening phenomenon in selected communities is uncommon. In addition, as gated communities are the most popular settlement pattern in urban areas of China (Wu, Yang et al., 2021), we also considered selecting these as communities that would be convenient for authors to conduct fieldwork and distribute questionnaires.

Table 1. Basic information on the three investigated communities.

Comm-unity	Year of Construction	Total Area (ha)	Number of Residents	Number of Households	Green Coverage (%)	Average House Price (CNY/m2)
F	2002	20.0	4320	1447	42	18205
H	2010	23.0	5600	1900	40	33851
G	2013	21.9	3300	1401	35	16250

Note: Average house price data is sourced from the average reference prices of second-hand properties on the Lianjia.com platform, the dominating platform for online brokerage services in China (Zhang, Lin et al., 2021). The rest is sourced from the community managers.

Communities F, H, and G are widely distributed, located in the Old Town, Hi-Tech Development Zone, and New Town respectively. These communities were built 8–20 years ago, and the green coverage was 35–42%, with 3000–6000 residents. The communities selected are commercial housing communities with a diverse composition of residents, including rural to urban migrants. It is illegal to garden privately in the public open spaces of these communities.

Field investigation

In order to fully understand the community environment, the researchers observed and assessed the current situation of vegetable gardening by residents in the study area. The preliminary information we wanted to obtain in the field was: 1) Are there community gardens? 2) Do community residents grow vegetables on public land without permission? 3) Is there any unused land in the public land of the community?

In particular, it is proposed that the sites examined in this study for growing vegetables do not include balconies of residential houses.

Questionnaire

The rapid development of the green community movement and the rapid promotion of community-supported agriculture both show China’s support for public participation in urban ecological agriculture. In order to achieve organized and institutionalized civic participation and improve the public participation mechanism and channels for the construction of community farm gardens, we produced the questionnaire “Survey Research on Willingness to Establish Community Farm Gardens” through the Questionnaire Star software platform and distributed the questionnaire in conjunction with the owners’ WeChat group from November 2020 to March 2021 in a targeted manner. The total number of people in the WeChat groups in the three communities F, H, and G were: 418, 485, and 457, respectively. According to the community manager, only one member per household was allowed to join the WeChat group of a community, which means that only one questionnaire was delivered per household, thus effectively preventing sample duplication and improving the precision of the sampling. The number of questionnaires returned in the three communities was 102, 112, and 126, respectively. In June 2021, the elderly were asked to respond in three survey sample communities and filled in 10, 15, and 17 questionnaires, respectively, with a total of 382 questionnaires recovered in total.

The questionnaire consists of three parts. The first part (Socio-demographic information) consisted of six single-choice questions on gender, age, education, monthly income, and whether minors are in the family. We believe that the presence of children in the family is crucial to the experiment results, as community gardens have an educational function and increase parent-child interaction. The second section (evaluation of the community and examining gardening experience) includes evaluating the community’s green environment and public infrastructure, scored on a five-point Likert scale. This section also includes an examination of gardening experience, which asks residents whether they do home gardening and whether they have any experience with gardening. The third section (attitudes and reasons for building community gardens) included whether they supported the construction of community gardens, their reasons for doing so, or their reasons for not doing so. For supporters, we also asked about their willingness to pay (money and time). In order to give the questionnaire a high degree of reliability, we set only two options for willingness, support, and no support. Furthermore, respondents could discontinue the questionnaire at any time if they did not have a suitable answer. In addition to this, we also set a subjective question, mainly hoping to obtain some personal suggestions from the residents.

Respondents did not receive financial incentives for their participation in this study, and the survey was designed in Chinese to ensure that the respondents fully understood the content.

The study was exploratory and did not set predictive goals. It mainly presents residents’ perceptions qualitatively, not to establish quantitative relationships or identify group-related variables. Nevertheless, the results provide valuable information for community managers to optimize unused land in their communities and better organize community greening.

Statistical analysis

The total population in the community determines the sample size for statistical analysis. The sample size was calculated using a margin of error of 10%, a confidence level of 95%, and a response distribution of 50%. The minimum sample size required for each community is 98 (Israel, 1992). Therefore, at least 98 questionnaires must be collected from each community to produce reliable results from individual cases. The number of questionnaires we obtained met this requirement. In addition, the total sample in the three communities in this study consisted of 382 respondents, which in the urban context, was found to be suitable for similar provincial capitals’ research in China (He and Zhu, 2018; Wei and Jones, 2022).

Descriptive statistics were used to assess respondents’ willingness to garden in the community by gender, age, education, monthly income, whether minors are in the family, green environment, public infrastructure, and planting experience. Each statistical analysis was conducted using chi-square tests to assess categorical variables. The statistical significance level was set at <0.05. All statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions) Statistics Version 26 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).

Results

Status of horticultural activities in the study area

During the survey, we found that the management of the F-community was relatively relaxed, and there was the phenomenon of occupying public green areas for vegetable gardening, as shown in Figure 2(a). First-floor residents were growing vegetables in their private gardens, and most first-floor residents were occupying public land adjacent to their private gardens. Some residents occupy unused open spaces near buildings for gardening activities. The types of planting are mainly vegetable growing and some ornamental horticultural plants. On occasions for planting vegetables on public land, the planting containers were mainly removable to facilitate quick evacuation during community remediation.

The management of the H-community is regulated, and there are no residents growing vegetables in the communal green areas. Residents on the ground floor grow vegetables in their private gardens and do not occupy outdoor public land. However, we found that some residents were occupying the roofs of buildings for vegetable gardening, as shown in Figure 2(b).

The management of the G-community is regulated. There are no households growing vegetables in the communal green areas, nor do any households have private gardens where they can grow vegetables, nor have they been found to be occupying rooftops for growing vegetables. Figure 2(c) shows the state of the communal green areas in the G-community.

Figure 2. Photos of investigation in three communities

Socio-demographic characteristics of respondents

Overall, 315 of the 382 respondents (82.5%) said they would like to have a community garden in the neighbourhood, while 67 (17.5%) were against it. Of the 382 respondents, 245 (64.1%) were female, 137 (35.9%) were male, and the respondents were from three communities in Wuhan, with an average age of 43.7 years. We surveyed respondents on their education level, monthly income, and whether they had minors in the family. For details, see Table 2.

Table 2. Differences among different socio-demographic characteristics in willingness.

Item	Group	N(%)	Yes(%)	No(%)	P*
Gender	Male	137(35.9)	105(76.6)	32(23.4)	0.025
	Female	245(64.1)	210(85.7)	35(14.3)
Community	F	112(29.3)	86(76.8)	26(23.2)	0.131
	H	127(33.2)	110(86.6)	17(13.4)
	G	143(37.4)	119(83.2)	24(16.8)
Age group	18-30	51(13.4)	35(68.6)	16(31.4)	0.021
	31-40	96(25.1)	81(84.4)	15(15.6)
	41-50	117(30.6)	94(80.3)	23(19.7)
	51-60	86(22.5)	75(87.2)	11(12.8)
	>60	32(8.4)	30(93.8)	2(6.2)
Education	Junior high school and below	68(17.8)	59(86.8)	9(13.2)	0.277
	High school	84(22.0)	65(77.4)	19(22.6)
	College or undergraduate	158(41.4)	128(81.0)	30(19.0)
	Graduate	72(18.8)	63(87.5)	9(12.5)
Monthly income	<1000RMB	31(8.1)	29(93.5)	2(6.5)	0.081
	1000-3000 RMB	56(14.7)	48(85.7)	8(14.3)
	3000-5000 RMB	105(27.5)	78(74.3)	27(25.7)
	5000-7000 RMB	128(33.5)	108(84.4)	20(15.6)
	>7000 RMB	62(16.2)	52(83.9)	10(16.1)
Whether minors are in the family	None	43(11.3)	24(55.8)	19(44.2)	<0.001
	Yes	339(88.7)	291(85.8)	48(14.2)

N: The number of respondents. Yes: Number of respondents supporting the construction of community gardens. No: Number of respondents who do not support the construction of community gardens. P*: Pearson’s chi-squared test.

We found significant differences in the willingness to build community gardens by gender, age group, and family structure (only for minors in the family). Living in different neighbourhoods, education levels, and monthly income did not significantly affect the results.

The proportion of women with a supportive view (85.7%, chi-squared, p =0.025) was significantly higher than the proportion of men (76.6%). Support was highest among the oldest age group (60+, 93.8%, chi-squared, p =0.021), and opposition was highest among 18 to 30(31.4%). A significantly higher proportion of respondents with minors in the family held a supportive view (85.8%, chi-squared, p<0.001) than those without minors (55.8%).

Respondents’ evaluations of the community and gardening experiences

Corresponding to the second part of the questionnaire, we found that there were significant differences in the evaluation of the greenery in the community, the evaluation of the public infrastructure in the community, the presence or absence of home gardening, and the presence or absence of gardening experience on the willingness to build a community garden, as shown in Table 3.

The respondents who rated the greening quality of the community as “very good” (n=38, 9.9%) and “good” (n=91, 23.8%) had lower support rates for community garden construction, which were 50.0% and 64.8% respectively (chi-squared, P<0.001). The respondents who think that the greening quality of the community is “general” (n=120, 31.4%), “bad” (n=103, 27.0%) and “very bad” (n=30, 7.9%) are very supportive of the construction of community gardens, with the rates reaching 92.5%, 96.1% and 90.0%.

The impact of public infrastructure evaluation on willingness has a similar conclusion. The respondents evaluated as “very lacking” (n=64, 16.8%) and “lack of” (n=114, 29.8%) have a support rate of 87.5% and 88.6% (chi-squared, P<0.001). The support rates of respondents who rated as “adequate” (n=44, 11.5%) and “very sufficient” (n=11, 2.9%) were only 61.4% and 54.5%. It is worth noting that the respondents who gave the “supply and demand in balance” (n=149, 39.0%) also showed a very high support rate (83.9%).

In this section of the survey, we also found that respondents doing home gardening at this stage had significantly higher support rates than those not doing home activities. Similarly, respondents with experience in gardening had a significantly higher support rate than those with no experience in gardening. See Table 3 for specific data.

Table 3. Differences among different evaluations and experiences in willingness.

Item	Group	N(%)	Yes(%)	No(%)	P*
Greenery	Very bad	30(7.9)	27(90.0)	3(10.0)	<0.001
	Bad	103(27.0)	99(96.1)	4(3.9)
	General	120(31.4)	111(92.5)	9(7.5)
	Good	91(23.8)	59(64.8)	32(35.2)
	Very good	38(9.9)	19(50.0)	19(50.0)
Public infrastructure	Very lacking	64(16.8)	56(87.5)	8(12.5)	<0.001
	Lack of	114(29.8)	101(88.6)	13(11.4)
	Supply and demand in balance	149(39.0)	125(83.9)	24(16.1)
	Adequate	44(11.5)	27(61.4)	17(38.6)
	Very sufficient	11(2.9)	6(54.5)	5(45.5)
Home gardening	None	256(67.0)	195(76.2)	61(23.8)	<0.001
	Yes	126(33.0)	120(95.2)	6(4.8)
Gardening experience	None	312(81.7)	247(79.2)	65(20.8)	<0.001
	Yes	70(18.3)	68(97.1)	2(2.9)

N: The number of respondents. Yes: Number of respondents supporting the construction of community gardens. No: Number of respondents who do not support the construction of community gardens. P*: Pearson’s chi-squared test.

Views of supporters

With 315 respondents indicating support for the community garden, we asked them further about their reasons for support and their willingness to pay. Willingness to pay included two aspects, money and time.

Reasons for supporting community garden construction

As shown in Figure 3. The vast majority of supporters (n=271, 86.1%) felt that building a community garden would allow young children to experience gardening activities and get closer to nature. 69.9% of supporters (n=220) felt that building a garden in the community would provide an opportunity to eat healthy vegetables and fruits. About two-thirds of the supporters (n=201, 63.9%) felt that community gardens improve neighbourhood communication. More than half of the supporters (n=176, 56.0%) thought gardening is a great way to spend their free time and get some exercise. In contrast, only 41.1% of supporters (n=129) thought it would enrich the variety of greenery and beautify the environment. The number of supporters who thought that growing vegetables and fruits would save money was the least (n=97, 30.9%).

Figure 3. Supporters’ reasons for supporting community garden construction

Willingness to pay in money

Figure 4(a) shows whether supporters are willing to pay land rent or management fees for community gardens. 56.0% (n=176) of the supporters indicated that they would decide whether they were willing or not according to the pricing, 35.1% (n=111) of the supporters were unwilling to pay a fee, and only 8.9% (n=28) of the supporters said they were willing to pay a fee.

Willingness to pay in time

Figure 4(b) shows whether supporters would participate in a garden if the community built one. 11.0% (n=35) of the supporters said they would participate every day. Most of these supporters are the elderly with planting experience. 29.1% (n=92) of the supporters answered that they would participate when they had time. 34% (n=107) of the supporters chose to attend on weekends and holidays, and about a quarter of the supporters (25.9%, n=82) were unwilling to participate in garden activities, although they supported community gardens.

Figure 4. Supporters’ willingness to pay

Views of non-supporters

We asked respondents who did not support community garden construction (n=67) about the main reasons for their lack of support. The results are shown in Figure 5. The most frequently mentioned reason is that it will lead to more mosquitoes (n=62, 91.9%). Secondly, 64.9% (n=43) of the respondents thought it would occupy public resources, and 61.0% (n=41) thought planting fertilizer would produce a peculiar smell. 42.9% of the respondents (n=29) believed that the use of agricultural facilities and tools would affect the community image, and nearly a quarter of respondents (n=16, 24.1%) felt that gardening activities should be carried out in rural areas rather than in cities.

Figure 5. Non-supporters’ reasons for not supporting community garden construction

Discussion

We conducted this study seven months after Wuhan was lifted from its ‘lockdown’ on 8 April 2020, when residents’ work and lives had been put back on track, avoiding the significant short-term impact of COVID-19. The impact of COVID-19 on support for community gardens was not part of our study. We wanted to understand how residents perceived the construction of community gardens in the post-epidemic era. The results show that 82.5% of participants support and 17.5% do not support the construction of community gardens. The data from this survey can potentially influence land-use policy in densely populated cities, and community managers should rethink what kind of open space residents need. As a study from the UK shows, community gardens are spaces that actively transform the urban workforce, and reclaim places for urban communities (Cumbers, Shaw et al., 2018).

We found that women support community gardens at a greater rate than men, and there is evidence that women spend the same or more time gardening than men (Armstrong, 2000). The proportion of older people supporting community gardens is more significant than young people, as community gardens are essential for the elderly, disabled, and disadvantaged (Relf and Dorn, 1995). A pilot study of the Growing Healthy Kids program in the southern states of the United States suggests that participation in community gardens appears to be a promising solution to childhood obesity (Castro, Samuels et al., 2013). Furthermore, many authors argue that community gardens can be places of learning and education (McVey, Nash et al., 2018). Therefore, these social effects of community gardens have led to a more significant proportion of families with children supporting community gardens than families without children.

We conducted this study in three communities in the main urban area of Wuhan, and the results of the study showed that there was no significant effect on a willingness on the community in which one lived. This finding needs to be validated by the results of a more extensive community study due to the limited sample selected.

We found no significant effect of educational attainment on willingness to build community gardens. Our findings contradict a previous study that suggested that the potential group of urban gardeners is a highly educated and knowledgeable group of people (Martinho da Silva, Oliveira Fernandes et al., 2016). Possible reasons for this contradiction are the different focus of the studies, the fact that willingness and action do not equate, and the fact that differences in social conditions between East and West may also contribute to the differences in the results.

The monthly income had no significant effect on willingness, and community gardens enrich the food choices of low- and middle-income urban populations, once defined as an organized grassroots initiative in Baltimore, Maryland (Corrigan, 2011). However, due to the multifaceted social benefits of community gardens, the amount of monthly income does not affect the willingness of urban residents to build community gardens.

The more dissatisfied respondents were with the community environment and infrastructure, the higher the percentage of support for community gardens. A study of six urban community gardens in Melbourne, Australia, showed that community gardens could improve social, environmental, and health outcomes (Kingsley, Foenander et al., 2020). A comparative study of community gardens in Baltimore, Chicago, and New York City (USA) suggests that community gardens provide social-ecological services (Anderson, Egerer et al., 2019). A survey of community gardens in Barcelona, Spain, showed that community gardens help to regulate the local climate (Camps-Calvet, Langemeyer et al., 2016). These environmental benefits have increased support for community gardens from respondents who were dissatisfied with the community environment and infrastructure.

In our study, gardening experience positively impacted community gardens, with respondents with gardening experience almost always supportive of community gardens, and previous research has similarly shown that increased gardening experience enhances the impact of affective motivation on gardening participation (Lee and Matarrita-Cascante, 2019). However, those who engage in home gardening prefer to build community gardens, which are a reflection of demand, and community gardens provide a place for gardening activities.

A study from Australia suggests that motivations for participation in community gardens are diverse, spanning a range of ancestral, social, environmental, and political domains (Kingsley, Foenander et al., 2019). In a small survey of members of 28 community gardens in the Czech Republic, scholars found that the primary motivation for garden members was not cropped production per se, but spending time, socializing, and relaxing (Dubová, Macháč et al., 2020). However, in our study, the educational benefits of community gardens were the reason for the overwhelming support of the respondents, with community gardens allowing young children to experience planting activities and get close to nature. Previous studies have shown that community gardens foster young children’s interaction with nature and strengthen intergenerational relationships (Gleeson, 2019) and that intergenerational interactions, in turn, promote sustainable community development. We also found that saving money by growing vegetables is the least important reason. Like the results of a case study in Europe and the United States, the least essential motivation for participating in urban agriculture is saving money (Kirby, Specht et al., 2021).

Our findings show that even among supporters of community gardening, about a third (35.1%) are not willing to pay for a community garden. As in a study on informal community gardens in Hangzhou, China, acceptance of community gardens decreases when respondents are asked to pay some management fees (He and Zhu, 2018). 25.9% of supporters were not willing to pay for community gardens in terms of time. An expert panel of community garden stakeholders identified the challenge of time demands for community engagement as a barrier to community garden success (Diaz, Webb et al., 2018). The reasons for this result may be due to the economic context and time conflicts. However, in general, we need to highlight the positive attitude of supporters towards community gardens, which are recognized for their social benefits. In an ad hoc conversation with randomly selected respondents in the field research, Ms. Wang said this to us, “DuringCOVID-19, I felt for the first time that growing my vegetables was such an important thing, and I hope that the community can introduce some management policies to support us in growing vegetables after COVID-19”.

Previous studies were primarily interviews with gardeners or managers and did not include residential opponents of community garden construction. Our study fills this gap. In addition to the unsupported reasons listed in the questionnaire, we also collected some comments, which called for the establishment of a precise management mechanism and put forward the problem of eliminating vegetable theft. Some residents even mentioned how to obtain seeds. These are worthy of our further study.

There are some limitations to this study. Firstly, this is an online survey, and although we helped some of the older people (those who do not use the internet regularly) to handwrite the questionnaire during the fieldwork, we could not eliminate the selectivity bias. Secondly, to avoid the distraction of a ‘neutral’ option, there are only support and non-support options for the construction of community gardens, so we were unable to assess the views of those with a ‘neutral’ attitude.

Despite these limitations, we report for the first time on the willingness of Wuhan residents in China to build community gardens, achieving citizen participation, and providing a basis for top-down community garden building.

Conclusions

The benefits of community gardens have been extensively researched. Still, little research has been conducted on residents’ willingness to build community gardens, and this paper helps to close this research gap. In the post epidemic era, we carried out this study. The results show that the vast majority of residents support the construction of gardens in the community, and there is a significant gap in the willingness of residents’ gender, age, and family structure to build community gardens. Living in which community, education level and monthly income had no significant impact on the results. The residents with a low evaluation of community greening and public infrastructure show a high support rate, and those with high evaluation show a low support rate. The reasons for support were mainly in the areas of education, food health, and neighbourhood interaction. Despite their support, nearly a third of the supporters are unwilling to pay for the garden, and a quarter of the residents indicate that they will not participate in garden activities. The main reasons for not supporting the construction of community gardens are that horticultural activities cause mosquitoes, produce peculiar smells, and occupy resources. We hope that the results of this study will give practical support to community management decision-makers or spatial planners, which will facilitate the development of management measures and careful planning.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, H.Z., N.A. and F.Z.; methodology, H.Z., N.A. and F.Z.; software, H.Z.; investigation, H.Z. and F.Z.; resources, F.Z.; data curation, H.Z. and F.Z.; writing—original draft preparation, H.Z. and F.Z.; writing—review and editing, H.Z. and N.A.; supervision, N.A.. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Ethics Declaration

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to acknowledge the community managers and the respondents who participated in the questionnaire, for giving us support. In addition, we would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive suggestions for improving this paper.

Funding

This work was supported by JST SPRING (grant number JPMJSP2109) and JSPS (grant number JP21K18761).

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