earticle

영어

Urban forests have important aesthetic values contributing to the quality of urban life. The aesthetic difference in urban forests can cause negative or positive externalities, e.g., the loss or increase of non-priced benefits. Urban forestry planning, therefore, should systematically assess and commensurately measure the aesthetic value of urban forests, i.e., in monetary terms with material values. Here we present an empirical study for assessing the aesthetic value of urban forests using on-site survey data from 1,000 visitors in the loess hilly-gully area of Loess Plateau (Yan’an, northern Shaanxi, China). An assessment model is established by logistic regression and automated neural networks for measuring the objective and subjective influencing factors of aesthetic attitude and individual willingness to pay (WTP) recreation fees for consumption of the urban forest environment. The objective factors are directly linked to WTP and gains the largest weight in the system; The subjective factors exert strong influences on WTP; additionally, quality of urban virescence strongly affects the respondents’ aesthetic attitudes, thus influencing their WTP. Our results are useful for assessing ecosystem service function in urban forests, thus contributing to the management and sustainable development of urban forests in the study area as well as other forests in similar settings.