Visitors’ experience of using smart facilities in urban parks: A study in Shenzhen

The popularity of urban parks with smart facilities is increasing, driven by technological advancements. However, existing research focuses on passive perceptions and lacks comprehensive insights into the dynamic relationships between smart park services and user interaction. To address this gap, this study aims to discuss classification standards for smart service facilities in urban parks, develop a research model to analyze visitor usage patterns, identify factors influencing their continued engagement with smart parks, and rank visitors' recognition of smart service facilities within parks. Using Lianhuashan Park, Shenzhen, as a case study, structural equation modeling was employed to validate visitors' intentions to continue using the smart park. The findings revealed that expectation–confirmation indirectly affects visitors’ intentions by mediating variables such as satisfaction, perceived usefulness, ease of use, and privacy. Perceived ease of use emerged as the strongest influence. Among the five categories of smart park service facilities, landscape interactive facilities had the highest correlation with the overall smart technology experience in parks. This study proposes a new theoretical research model, identifies directions for optimizing service quality in smart parks, and addresses the limitations of previous studies that focused on technology while neglecting user experience.

Management implications

The management of smart parks involve a variety of disciplines including IoT, big data statistics, ergonomics, remote sensing science, etc. It requires the cooperation of multidisciplinary personnel, which greatly increases the difficulty of facilities management in the smart parks. Moreover, the smart park system is not perfected enough, lacks certain theoretical support, and there are few excellent cases. This research applied the ECM-ISC extended model to the field of smart park research, which will help promote the user-friendly and sustainable development of smart parks and provide visitors with a more comfortable environment and better services. This study suggests that park managers and decision makers should promote the continuance intention of smart parks by increasing visitor satisfaction and increasing investment in landscape interactive facilities.