Title: Functional needs and residents' motivation towards visiting a neighbourhood park

Authors: Amine Moulay; Norsidah Ujang

Addresses: Department of Architectural Design, College of Art and Design, Royal University for Women, P.O. Box 37400, Riffa, Kingdom of Bahrain ' Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Design and Architecture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract: Despite neighbourhood parks meet residents' social needs, provide visual enjoyment, and create passive and active recreational opportunities, most of them are underutilised. To understand this issue, research focused on the social and physical aspects of parks using mainly quantitative methods. Few explored the psychological aspect in terms of motivation and dependence. Hence, this qualitative research aims to provide a more in-depth understanding of resident's functional needs that foster their dependence towards neighbourhood parks. The study involved purposively 29 park users living in the neighbourhood of Precinct 9, Putrajaya, Malaysia. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used then verbatim transcribed. Based on the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, results revealed that the contextual dimensions and the incentives for park utilisation constitute the major themes, where gathering outdoors, physical activity, emotional, functional, and environmental motivation variables are the sub-themes. The practical and theoretical implications are outlined regarding park users' expectations and experiences for enhanced park utilisation.

Keywords: neighbourhood parks; place dependence; phenomenology; behaviour; park utilisation; third place.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSOC.2021.115681

International Journal of Sustainable Society, 2021 Vol.13 No.1, pp.34 - 54

Received: 28 Feb 2020
Accepted: 10 Jan 2021
Published online: 16 Jun 2021 *

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