Multiple Dimensions of Green Spaces and Their Interaction with Mental Wellbeing: A Comparative Analysis between Singapore and Hong Kong

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, many have raised the vitality of proper green space planning as the association between green spaces and public wellbeing became more obvious due to various mobility restrictions. In this paper, we examine how multidimensional factors of green spaces (i.e. quantity, quality and accessibility) are associated with public visits to green spaces and whether these factors influence the extent of benefits of green spaces to mental wellbeing. We perform comparative analyses between Singapore and Hong Kong, which present a significant difference in green space planning. A total of 298 surveys were conducted in Singapore and Hong Kong, with responses comprising green space usage, mental wellbeing, and socioeconomic information of respondents. Our analysis findings demonstrate that for their decision to visit green spaces, people are more sensitive to the green space dimension lacking in their local environment. For example, respondents in Singapore that features lower green space accessibly than Hong Kong are much more to this while Hongkong respondents were more sensitive to green space quality. We also find that respondents in Hong Kong have increased their visits to green spaces more significantly than Singaporean counterparts after the COVID-19 outbreak, and the association between this increase and enhanced mental wellbeing is more significant in Hong Kong. This provides an important implication that green space accessibility can play a more important role to mental wellbeing compared to the role of green space quality, especially when people restrict their mobility due to health concerns.