INFLUENCING FACTORS ON PERFORMANCE OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR SETTINGS AT PARKS AND GREEN SPACES OF TABRIZ

Abstract

Parks and green spaces are significant areas that are necessary to reduce citizens’ mental and moral pressures more than ever. So, as for the importance of parks and urban green spaces, consideration of influencing factors on performance of these areas as citizen’s social behavior setting is basically significant. This research seeks to answer the question of how citizens’ behaviors are distinctly the same in terms of gender, age and social and economic characteristics in urban parks. The population of this research is represented by those who go to the parks and green spaces of Tabriz metropolis. The Cochran’s formula was used to select a sample of 400 subjects who were specified by a simple random method. The reliability of the questionnaire was calculated at 0.902 using the Cronbach’s alpha formula while the research data was analyzed via the descriptive-inferential approach. The implementation of factor analysis model reduced the 62 variables of citizens’ social behavior to 23 variables and 4 factors. In considering the effects on citizen’s behavior in parks, these factors in order of preference are: social-psychological, physical-structural, economic and environmental. These four factors can explain 85.272% of the citizen’s social behavior. The stepwise regression test results showed that all the analyzed variables, referring to the performance of citizen’s social behavioral setting in parks and urban green spaces, are positively and meaningfully correlated. The independent t-test results showed that the urban park performances as behavior setting register significant differences between men and women. In this sense, the conclusions of the paper highlight the need to consider the complex needs of the residents in the designing and execution process of urban parks and green spaces.