The role of urban green space for human well-being

Arbeitspapier

Most people in Europe live in urban environments. For these people, urban green space is an important element of well-being, but it is often in short supply. We use self-reported information on life satisfaction and different individual green space measures to explore how urban green space affects the well-being of the residents of Berlin, the capital city of Germany. We combine spatially explicit survey data with spatially highly disaggregated GIS data on urban green spaces. We observe a significant, inverted U-shaped effect of the amount of and distance to urban green space on life satisfaction. According to our results, the optimal amount of green space in a 1 km buffer is 36 ha, or 11.5% of the buffer area, and 75% of the respondents have less green space available. Our results are robust to a number of robustness checks.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Kiel Working Paper ; No. 1911

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; General Welfare; Well-Being ; Valuation of Environmental Effects ; Ecological Economics: Ecosystem Services; Biodiversity Conservation; Bioeconomics; Industrial Ecology ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: General
• Subject: life satisfaction ; urban ecosystem services ; urban green space ; well-being

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bertram, Christine ; Rehdanz, Katrin
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
• (where): Kiel
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/94356
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET