Exploring the Willingness of Chinese Urban Dwellers to Support Community Gardening: A Case Study of Wuhan, China

Abstract

As a new project associated with urban agriculture and community forestry in China, developing community gardens has been a concern of urban planners and managers. However, the response of urban residents to this project is still unknown, creating an awareness gap between communities and policy makers. This gap limits the successful implementation of the project. A combined method of on-site and online questionnaire was performed in eight sample residential areas in Wuhan. Results showed that the majority of the 496 respondents had favorable views, although the specific willingness varied. Lack of awareness about community gardens was considered the biggest obstacle restricting residents’ willingness, accounting for 69.15%. Other factors included confused relationships with neighbors (66.13%), imperfect policies (55.44%), and high planting costs (41.94%). The local government was highly expected to plan more land for agriculture use by 76.61% of the respondents. In addition, the respondents desired the government to conduct training on cultivating technologies (58.67%), address possible conflicts (57.46%), supply seeds and fertilizer (54.23%), and provide guidance in processing food products (34.48%). These findings will help local governments and managers draft scientific proposals closely related to the public’s perspectives in implementing community gardens in urban areas and provide informative references for other cities.

1. Introduction

Urbanization is marked by the increasing growth of urban populations and dense buildings in cities. Resultingly, with agricultural land being replaced by urban or non-agricultural cover, farmers lose their farmland. They can no longer produce fresh food for self-sufficiency and have to rely on processed food or food transported over long distances [1]. According to Drescher et al. [2], more than 6000 tons of food must be imported daily into cities with populations of 10 million to meet the food demand. During the transportation process, some valuable micronutrients of fruits or vegetables are lost [3], which reduces the food quality within cities. In addition, the transportation costs increase household food expenditures [4], which decreases the purchasing power of the urban poor, especially in developing countries.

One of the most popular solutions is to maximize the food production potential of urban vacant land [5,6,7,8]. For example, in Detroit, two-thirds of vegetables consumed and 40% of non-tropical fruit consumed could be provided with less than half of the available land (roughly 1800 acres) converted into productive space [9]. However, the current vacant land in rapidly urbanized areas is limited and cannot provide enough space for local food production. Exploiting new spaces for agriculture use is difficult and expensive in most cities [10]. Consequently, more and more local governments in both developed and developing countries such as United States [11], Czechia [12], Philippines [13], Brazil [14], and South Africa [15] have started to support food production in urban public spaces. Edible species such as flowers, vegetables, fruits, herbs and food crops have been numerously introduced into urban parks, community gardens, and school yards [13].

In most developing countries, urban food production is an important strategy in improving food security [16,17]. China has been experiencing rapid urbanization in recent years, with the population of urban residents increasing from 170 million to 830 million over the past 40 years [18]. One of the most urgent issues for China in the future is how to improve the food security in cities [19]. However, there are still no formal government-led community gardens in China, although it has attracted much attention from researchers and planners [20,21,22,23]. More and more Chinese city dwellers have gradually accepted introducing edible plants into urban areas and desire to experience community gardening in their spare time [24]. Nevertheless, the growers perform their cultivation behavior mainly in private and semiprivate spaces instead of public areas [22]. This has been attributed to complex factors such as neglected public infrastructures and potential conflicts between growers and non-growers [21]. Most of the urban residents who support planting edible species in public areas mainly prefer the special ornamental and aesthetic effects rather than the functions of food production and improving food quality [22,25]. They believe that cultivation activities should be personal and should not be performed on public lands.

In fact, at least 100 million people around the world are involved in urban horticulture activities [26], most of which are conducted in urban public spaces [27,28]. In most cases, public gardens lack private planting patches and instead involve collective cultivation by different people within a shared area [29,30]. This emphasizes their nature as a collective activity on public lands, instead of individual behavior in private backyards [30,31]. As the main participant, the urban dweller plays an irreplaceable role throughout the food production process. The policies made by governments and the related activities require collaboration and negotiation from the local community [32,33]. In the near future, some top-down policies associated with urban agroforestry will be tried out by the government in China. Residents’ acceptance and willingness are crucial for the success of new projects, especially those performed in public areas [15,22].

In recent years, some pilot projects related to urban agroforestry have been carried out in Chinese metropolises. Among them, community gardens have been concerned by some planners and managers [25,34,35]. Unlike urban agriculture projects such as community farms, community gardens, and school yards in other countries [12,14,15,16], community gardening initiatives in China currently aim to attract residents’ participation in horticultural activities, rather than solely focusing on food production [20,25]. Previous studies have mainly focused on clarifying the concept and connotation of community gardens, exploring the landscape construction strategy with edible species from a technique perspective, and optimizing the spatial layout of community garden to obtain comprehensive services [25,36,37]. Several pilot projects of community gardens have been gradually carried out in Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen [34,35,38]. These cities serve as pioneers and pilots of urban agricultural projects in China, often implemented in community public spaces such as the rooftops of high-rise buildings and green spaces in communities based on the perspective of space planning or landscape design without considering the residents’ willingness [21,24]. This may lead to disputes and conflicts between growers and their neighbors, the communities, and property managers [16,23]. However, the fact is that community gardening has rarely been discussed at community level in China so far [21,25].

It is of primary importance to understand how local residents respond to community gardening. Do the local residents accept the introduction of edible species into community public spaces? Are they willing to cooperate with and participate in community gardening? What are their worries regarding this new project? What do they expect governments and regulators to do about it? So far, there are no clear answers to these questions. This study, therefore, aims to: (1) investigate the resident’s attitude towards, willingness of, cooperation with, and participation in planting edible species in urban public areas; (2) detect the main barriers to the promotion of community gardens in China from the perspective of urban dwellers; and (3) examine what the residents expect the government to provide during the implementation process. The findings provide scientific information as reference material to alleviate the contradiction between managers and urban residents and ensure the successful implementation of related projects.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Study Area

This study was carried out in Wuhan (113°41′–115°05′ E, 29°58′–31°22′ N), the capital of Hubei Province in China. Wuhan is located in the eastern part of the Jianghan Plain and at the intersection of the Yangtze River and the Hanjiang River. Known as “the thoroughfare of nine provinces”, Wuhan is the largest transport hub of water, land, and air in inland China (http://www.wuhan.gov.cn/zjwh/, accessed on 23 April 2021). It is an open city with frequent foreign interflow and the residents have a higher degree of tolerance and acceptance of new things. It covers an area of 8569 km² with 13 administrative districts and a resident population of over 11 million. It has experienced accelerated urbanization in recent years. The GDP of Wuhan was more than CNY 1.77 trillion in 2021, with an increase of about 162% from a decade ago. The total export–import volume reached CNY 335.9 billion in the same year, ranking first in central China (Wuhan Statistics Bureau, 2022).

2.2. Questionnaire Design

To achieve the research objectives mentioned above, a questionnaire was designed, including several questions and related options. As shown in

Table 1. The main contents of the questionnaire.

Subject	Objective	Content
Individual characteristics	To explore the influence of residents’ socio-economic characteristics on their willingness	Gender, age, education level, and time living in Wuhan
Willingness	To collect residents’ attitudes and willingness of the government-led community garden project	Acceptance of cultivating edible plants in parks, attitudes towards renting public land for horticultural use, and willingness to taking part in government-led activities
Barriers and expectations	To further examine the possible problems and solutions in developing the Project	Residents’ confusion about the project and expectations of the local government

, the questionnaire was mainly composed of three parts: respondents’ individual characteristics, residents’ willingness to accept or implement community gardens, and their confusion about the project and expectations of the government. A preliminary questionnaire was carried out among a small number of people to test the validation and efficiency of the questionnaire [22]. To ensure that the questions involved in the questionnaire were clear and concise, the questions that the respondents significantly hesitated to answer or were confused about in the pre-interview process were modified or redesigned. The complete response time for all questions was tested and recorded. Besides, the anonymity of the interview and brief introduction about community gardens were stated at the beginning of the questionnaire.

2.3. Data Collection

To collect the opinions on community gardens from the local city dwellers, the study area was confined to the Wuhan urbanized area. Previous studies concluded that the respondents’ demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education condition, and living time in an area might influence their attitudes towards a newcomer or new concept [21,22,23,26,27]. the residents’ characteristics are closely related to the community properties such as the geographical location, construction age, and green coverage [20,39]. Eight sample residential areas were then selected as the case plots in this study (shown in Figure 1) based on the following criteria: (1) They are dominated by high-rise buildings with more than 10 floors; (2) they are distributed in the urbanized area of Wuhan urbanized as evenly as possible from the inner city to the third ring-road; (3) they differ from each other in construction age and green coverage.

The questionnaire survey was conducted from April to June and a face-to-face interview was supplemented in October 2022. Both the on-site and online surveys were adopted in this study. Before the investigation, all interviewers were trained on the interview methods, inquiry tone, and survey purpose. The options of all questions in the questionnaire were explained in a unified way so that the interviewees could understand the questions in a consistent logic. The on-site questionnaire was mainly carried out in public spaces such as community parks, community center, and vegetable markets in and near the sample communities. The questionnaires involved different age groups as much as possible. For some elderly people, the interviewers recorded the answers based on their dictation after fully explaining the questions and associated options. In addition, an online survey was conducted to expand the sample size through QQ groups or WeChat groups of the owners in the sample communities.

To better understand the main reasons why the respondents expressed different levels of willingness towards community gardening, we supplemented an onsite interview with some residents. The interview was conducted mainly in the four typical urban communities, namely Tiandiyujiang Community, Tongxin Community, Xujiapeng Changlun Community, and Parrot Community, where the residents showed higher level of cooperation in the previous questionnaire survey. In principle, the interview was open-ended without any pre-set answers. Only when a few interviewees were unable to express their opinions, would we provide a guidance based on the options related to the Barriers (Section 3.2) and Expectations (Section 3.3). Then the answers were summarized and categorized according to different willingness options.

2.4. Data Analysis

The rationality and logicality of all questionnaire results collected from both on-site and online interviews were checked based on the response time and inherent logic. The results of the prequestionnaire showed that it took at least 72 s to answer all the questions carefully and completely. Online questionnaires with an answering time of less than 72 s were considered unreasonable and were therefore excluded. For the online questionnaires, those with the same IP address and similar answers were marked and only one of them was included in the sample database to eliminate any duplicate answers. In addition, the questionnaires with incomplete and conflicting answers were excluded.

Then, 496 valid responses (including 301 on-site questionnaires and 195 online ones) were entered into an Excel database and the statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 17.0 software. The frequency analysis method was used to clarify respondents’ response to a certain statement based on the 496 questionnaires. The 38 face-to-face interview records were used to explain why the respondents choose their options.

3. Results

3.1. Residents’ Willingness towards Community Gardening

To investigate the residents’ attitude towards and willingness of developing community gardens in Wuhan city, three key questions were designed. For each question, the main reasons why they chose a certain answer was recorded based on further face-to-face interviews.

3.1.1. Acceptance of City Dwellers to Food Production in Public Areas

Table 2. Acceptance of urban residents to food production in public areas (n = 496).

Accept or Not	Number	%	Key Reasons
Yes	325	65.52	Looking forward to intensive land use and varied visual effect
Maybe	94	18.95	Unawareness of community gardens
No	77	15.53	Worries over adverse effects

records the residents’ response to the question “can you accept food production in public areas?”. Out of the 496 respondents, 325 could accept the behavior of food production in urban public areas, accounting for the largest proportion of 65.52%. Noticeably, they expressed their positive attitude for community gardens mainly because this could provide intensive land use and different visual effects. To some extent, the residents paid more attention to the aesthetic function of community gardens while ignoring the benefit of food production. About 18.95% (n = 94) of the interviewees answered “maybe” to this question and expressed a neutral attitude. Their hesitation came from the unawareness and uncertainty of this new project. Only 77 (15.52%) respondents clearly opposed this new project. They thought that the cultivation activities might destroy the original landscape and the application of fertilizers and insecticides could pollute the living environment.

Figure 2 expresses the specific acceptance or willingness differences of planting edible species in public areas among different groups. More women (n = 297) than men (n = 199) showed their interest in community gardens and were willing to be interviewed. However, they shared a similar response to this question, answering “yes”, “no”, and “maybe” in almost the same proportion. Out of all 496 respondents, 341 were aged 20–40 with the proportion of 68.75%. When considering percentage willingness within age groups, 77.42% of the group aged 40–60 answered “yes”, but only 50% of the group aged >60 expressed clear support. Respondents with higher education level showed more attention and willingness than those with a lower education level. About 73.63% of the postgraduates surveyed had a positive answer, but only 51.72% of the respondents with junior high school education or below did so. Residents who have lived in Wuhan for more than 10 years (n = 328, 66.13%) were more willing to be interviewed. Meanwhile, no obvious differences of willingness to accept food production in public spaces existed among different living time groups.

3.1.2. Willingness of City Dwellers in Renting Public Land to Grow Edible Plants

Table 3. Willingness of urban residents to rent the public land for horticulture (n = 496).

Willing or Not	Number	%	Key Reasons
Yes	167	33.67	To obtain physical exercise and fresh food
Maybe	223	44.96	Lack of time and knowledge on planting and cultivation
No	106	21.37	Worries about potential conflicts in public spaces

lists the residents’ answer to the question “are you willing to rent a community area to grow edible plants?”. When the residents had access to agricultural cultivation, only 167 (33.67%) answered “yes” to this question, expressing their positive willingness. They took the cultivation activities as a kind of physical exercise in their spare time. At the same time, they preferred to obtain safe and fresh vegetables or fruits. Nearly half of the respondents (n = 223) were hesitant. They worried that there might not be enough time to take care of the rented land because of their busy work and life. They also lacked adequate planting knowledge to handle the whole cultivation process without the agriculture experience. About 21.37% (n = 106) were not willing to rent community public land for food production. They believed that the horticulture behaviors could produce a series of potential conflicts with their neighbors, which might worsen their neighborhood relations.

Figure 3 indicates the specific willingness differences of renting public land to grow edible plants among different groups. Approximately 36.18% of the male respondents were willing to rent public land, which is slightly higher than that (31.99%) of the female respondents. Female respondents expressed more hesitation on this issue, with the answer “maybe” accounting for 50.84%. Young people under 20 years old had a clear view of “yes” or “no”. The proportion of the support and disapproval (age group < 20) was the same, with the values of 46.15%. About 44.35% (n = 55) of age group 40–60 said “yes”, followed by 29.91% (age group 20–40) and 22.22% (age group > 60). A total of 45.33% of the respondents with high school education showed a clear willingness, a higher proportion than the other three education groups.

3.1.3. Willingness of City Dwellers to Participate in Government-Led Activities

Table 4. Participation of urban residents in government-led activities (n = 496).

Participation	Number	%	Key Reasons
Full participation	109	21.98	Considering themselves as the important intermediaries
Partial participation	343	69.15	Regarding government as the leader while residents the participants
No participation	44	8.87	Indifferent to the project

shows the residents’ attitude towards the question “Can you participate in government-led activities related to community gardens?”. Generally, only 44 respondents (8.87%) were not willing to take part. They showed indifference to the project and related activities. About 69.15% (n = 343) of the respondents were willing to take part in the related activities, but only partially. They expressed their support for the project, but their actual actions would be limited. Because they believed the official groups could provide authoritative guidance in organization, implementation, coordination, and management of the activities, and the local dwellers only need to cooperate and partially participate. Still, about 21.98% (n = 109) said they would participate in the whole process of the activities organized by the government. They considered themselves as the important intermediaries between the government and local communities.

Figure 4 shows the specific participation differences in government-led activities associated with community gardens among different groups. The responses of “yes”, “maybe”, and “no” indicated the interviewees’ willingness of full participation, partial participation, and non-participation, respectively. No remarkable difference of willingness was detected between male and female respondents. Of all 124 respondents in age group 40–60, only 9 residents (accounting for 7.26%) had clearly negative willingness. Full participants (n = 6) and non-participants (n = 3) aged below 20 years old accounted for 46.15% and 23.08%, respectively. The proportion pattern of “yes”, “no”, and “maybe” in age group < 20 significantly differed from the three other age groups. The interviewees’ education level influenced their willingness: the lower the education level, the higher the proportion of non-participation. Approximately 27.59% of the respondents with middle school education were not willing to participate in the activities, while only 4.4% of those with postgraduate education did so.

3.2. Barriers Influencing the Participating Willingness of Urban Dwellings

Recognizing the barriers influencing the participation willingness of urban residents is the basis for formulating effective policies. As shown in

Table 5. Barriers influencing the participation willingness of urban residents (n = 496).

Barriers	Number	%
Lack of awareness	343	69.15
High planting costs	208	41.94
Confused relationships with others	328	66.13
Imperfect policies	275	55.44
Others	35	7.06

, 69.15% of respondents (n = 496) believed that public lack of awareness on edible landscape and community gardens was the main barrier. Followed were the confused relationships with others during the processes of planting, cultivating, harvesting, and food handling, which troubled 328 respondents (66.13%). Additionally, 275 (55.44%) and 208 (41.94%) interviewees also complained about imperfect policies and high planting costs, respectively.

Figure 5 illustrates the different understanding on barriers from the respondents with different standpoints. About one-third of the respondents (30.39%, 33.16%, and 33.33%, respectively) that answered “yes” to the project in all three groups believed that urban residents were reluctant to implement the project mainly because they did not know enough about edible landscapes and community gardens. What troubled the respondents that were hesitant to community gardens the most was the “confused relationships with others”, which ranked first with 28.65%, 27.67%, and 24.18% in the three cases, respectively. Those who responded “no” to the project believed that “imperfect policies” and “complex relationships with others” were the main obstacles preventing the residents’ willingness.

3.3. Residents’ Expectations from Local Government

Table 6. Expectations of residents on implementing community gardens from the local government (n = 496).

Expectations	Number	%
Plan more land	380	76.61
Provide more species or sources of seeds and fertilizer	269	54.23
Conduct training	291	58.67
Deal with possible conflicts	285	57.46
Provide guidance	171	34.48

displays the residents’ expectations on implementing community gardens from the local government. Approximately 76.61% of the respondents (n = 496) expected the government to plan more land for agricultural use in urbanized areas. About 58.67% of the respondents were worried about their lack of professional knowledge of food production and hoped that the government would conduct training on cultivation technologies. About 57.46% desired the local government to deal with the possible conflicts between the growers and others, such as when their fruits and vegetables were stolen or when others complained about bad smell from the agriculture field. About 54.23% wished the government would provide more species or sources of crop seeds and fertilizers for them. About 34.48% of the respondents expected that the local government could provide guidance in handling or processing food products, especially when the produced food exceeded their daily needs.

4. Discussion

Similar to many other developing countries, China has been experiencing rapid urbanization in the past three decades, with an urgent demand to improve urban food security [19]. However, there are still no public areas planned by the government for food production in urban areas in China [21]. Urban public spaces are generally used for leisure, exercise, decoration, and entertainment (Table 3). It will take a long time for Chinese residents to accept the benefit of food production from public land, even though the benefit has been already achieved in most developed countries [4,6,12] and many other developing ones [13,14,15]. Urban food system planning should be conducted based on full investigation. The urban residents’ demand for food products, nutrition, and quality need to be estimated by professional institutions. Correspondingly, some other projects associated with urban agriculture in improving food availability, food access, and food quality can be discussed and carried out to promote urban food security. Constructing community gardens provides a possible way for Chinese urban residents to understand urban agriculture.

From our investigation, more than 80% of the respondents were optimistic about community gardens and positively support its implementation in urban public areas (see Table 2, Table 3 and Table 4). This finding was consistent with an investigation conducted in Beijing. As reported by Wang (2012), nearly three-fourths of the respondents in Beijing expressed a desire to experience community gardening in urban areas [24]. However, the specific willingness of the city dwellers to participate in community gardens varied in the different groups. Only 13 young people under the age of 20 and 18 residents over 60 years old agreed to be interviewed, accounting for 2.6% and 3.6% of all respondents, respectively. However, young respondents expressed a definite positive response to questions about both renting community land and participation in government-led activities, with the proportion being much higher than the three other groups. Building school gardens to encourage young people to pay attention to food security could effectively improve the residents’ implementation willingness of this project [40,41]. The older residents over 60 were the most uncooperative and showed obvious vigilance and exclusion to the project. Meanwhile, previous research has indicated that old residents have more spare time and interest in cultivation activities [42,43]. Physical exercise and communication with their neighbors in cultivating and harvesting activities can prevent geriatric diseases and significantly improve health [44]. Creating opportunities to attract local dwellers to share the work, experience, and harvest in cultivation activities helps residents (especially elderly residents) to accept and practice the project [37]. As reported by Spilková, “doing something together” might encourage residents to participate in and enjoy community gardening [12]. More pilot projects such as edible parks, community gardens, and school gardens could be introduced into urban areas to provide field experience and on-site education [16,27].

The government plays a vital role in implementing community gardens. Considering the community garden as a newcomer to Chinese cities, urban residents are unaware of its concept, function, cultivation technologies, and potential risks (Table 2 and Table 3). For most of the urban residents, they are attracted mainly by the aesthetic effect and natural experience rather than the fresh food [22]. Their unawareness of community gardens hinders their willingness to participate in the activities (Table 5). Government-guided education and training is crucial in promoting better understanding and participation, planning appropriate plant species, managing irrigation and fertilization, controlling pest and diseases, and processing the food products [23,29]. A greater amount of social education is needed to increase the awareness about healthy food and participation in urban farming. Urban residents and managers can be trained in food cultivation skills and related policies through professional organization and teaching. Additionally, “imperfect policies” and “complex relationships with others” were also barriers and confused the residents (Table 5). They might feel embarrassed when facing complaints about annoying insects and the unpleasant smell from agriculture land, as discussed in previous studies [21,45,46]. Without the corresponding policy support, it was difficult for them to deal with these relationships in a satisfactory manner.

Residents’ acceptance and support for the project provided enough confidence and encouragement for the government. However, there is still a long way to go before the project can be successfully implemented. Because of the abovementioned worries, most of the respondents had a very positive attitude (Table 2), but they were more hesitant or negative in their behavior (Table 3 and Table 4). Higher acceptance does not necessarily lead to more positive behaviors, which was confirmed by Caputo et al. [47]. The local government was expected to play a role in addressing this non-equivalence (Table 6). They should become involved in the whole process, such as planning, implementing, and managing the project. First of all, they were expected to perform the land use planning systematically and provide more area for agricultural use [11,12,13,14,15]. Another important expectation of the public for the government was that when contradictions or conflicts occurred, the interests of different stakeholders could be coordinated and balanced authoritatively [48]. Therefore, more officially authorized organizations and institutions should be established to secure the successful promotion of the project.

Our research examined Chinese residents’ willingness and attitudes towards community gardening, which provides information for local governments and urban planners to make appropriate decisions. However, there are still some limitations to this study. Initially, the present study was conducted in Wuhan, an open city in central China. The findings are somewhat representative but cannot be directly applied to other cities. Much more sample cities should be involved in future studies. Besides, the successful implementation of community gardens usually involves multiple stakeholders such as the community, local government, policy makers, and urban planners. This study focused on the perspective of local communities. Further studies can be extended to other related stakeholders. In addition, most respondents thought that the project should be organized and managed by the government (Table 4). Especially in the initial stage, strengthening public awareness of community gardens, balancing the relationship between various groups, and setting appropriate land rents all rely on government leadership (Table 5). This requires improving the legislation of community gardens [49] based on a series of studies such as land price evaluation, distribution of rights and interests, and property management models [50].

5. Conclusions

In this study, 496 respondents were interviewed either face-to-face or through online questionnaires. In general, the respondents showed a relatively positive willingness to accept and participate in community gardening. They believed that the implementation of this new project could provide different visual effects, as well as farming experience. What troubled the communities the most was that they knew little about edible landscapes and community gardens. They worried over the possible difficulty they would face during the cultivation process. Without the policy support from the government, they would have no confidence to deal with the potential conflicts with their neighbors. Therefore, the residents expected the local government to do something for them when the project was implemented. What they expected the most was that the government could systematically perform land use planning and provide more horticultural land. They also needed the professional training on cultivation technologies and assistance in dealing with the confused relationships. At present, the intervention of the government and official organizations is very important, which is the guarantee for the successful implementation of the project. These findings help the local government and managers draft scientific proposals closely related to the public in implementing community gardens and provide informative references for other cities.