2017 Volume 30 Issue 4 Pages 238-249
It has become a common recognition that the human in urban area receive a great benefit from the ecosystem services of green spaces. Nevertheless, the function and value of green spaces are not sufficiently considered in decision making on urban development. It is partly because there are not explicit, e.g. monetary, valuations of importance of green spaces. For appropriate economic valuation of green spaces, non-market value of the green spaces should be measured. Using Life Satisfaction Approach, this paper evaluates the psychological and subjective benefit of urban green spaces in monetary term. Analyzing the substitution between green spaces and income, we calculate monetary value of urban green spaces. As a result, we found significantly positive contribution of urban green spaces on citizens’ life satisfaction. And we have the results that the effects of urban green spaces on life satisfaction was six times larger than effects of forests. It is partly because the functions of urban green spaces and forests are different. In addition, using K6 indicator used in WHO, we also found that urban green spaces significantly relieve the level of people’s depression feelings.
