Research on the Evaluation of Service Effectiveness of Urban Greenways: Taking Municipal Greenways in the Main City of Nanjing as an Example

As an important green infrastructure, urban greenways can provide a range of socio-ecological benefits and play an important role in improving the urban ecological environment and enhancing the quality of living. Currently, the relationship between service quality and the actual benefits of greenways has not been sufficiently explored in urban greenway research. This study introduces the concept of “efficiency”, determines service efficiency and service effectiveness as the evaluation dimensions, selects 4 first-level indicators and 12 second-level indicators to evaluate the service efficiency of greenways, and constructs an evaluation model using a combination of subjective and objective assignments. This study uses the overall service effectiveness index and the efficiency–effectiveness balance index to measure the overall performance of the greenway space in the hope of revealing the key factors and reasons that affect the service effectiveness of the greenway and providing a theoretical basis for optimizing the planning and management of the greenway. Using ArcGIS network analysis technology, image semantic segmentation technology, a questionnaire survey, network text analysis, and other methods to quantify the indicators, this paper conducts an empirical study on four municipal greenways in Nanjing. This research shows that the factors affecting the service effectiveness of greenways mainly include the landscape environment, greenway functions, transportation conditions, and supporting facility factors. The contradiction between the single-function positioning and the variety of user needs is the main reason for the imbalance between the efficiency and effectiveness of urban greenways. This study provides a new path to quantify greenway service effectiveness and enriches the greenway evaluation theory.