Understanding sentiments and activities in green spaces using a social data-driven approach

Abstract

Green spaces are believed to enhance the well-being of residents in urban areas. Although there is research exploring the emotional benefits of green spaces, most early works are based on user surveys and case studies, which are typically small in scale, intrusive, time intensive, and costly. In contrast to earlier works, we utilize a nonintrusive methodology to understand green space effects at large scale and, in greater detail, via digital traces left by Twitter users. Using this methodology, we perform an empirical study on the effects of green spaces on user sentiments, emotions, and activities in Melbourne, Australia, and our main findings are (1) tweets in green spaces contain more po..