1. Introduction
The fast-paced lifestyle, intense work pressure and recurrent outbreaks of COVID-19 have increased the overall negative emotions and psychological needs of individuals. Meanwhile, the demand of residents for local travel and daily leisure is greatly increasing due to the restrictions on cross-regional movement of people caused by the epidemic prevention and control measures. According to the Annual Report of China Domestic Tourism Development (2022–2023), the pandemic has made residents more cautious in their travels, which is reflected in the obvious reduction in travel distance and recreational radius of destinations, showing new characteristics such as short time, close distance and high frequency. The urban recreation market will enter the new stage of development in which the service targets are mainly local residents.
“Recreation” consists of something carried out for refreshment or diversion, it is an activity that renews one’s health and spirits by relaxation and amusement [
1]. The localization of recreation emphasizes recreational activities performed “in situ” (workplace, living place or recent permanent residence) from the geospatial dimension. Unlike long-distance travel on holidays, daily recreational needs can be met in the inner space or suburbs of cities. Meanwhile, the localization attaches great importance to placeness, which is regarded as a quality that distinguishes a place from other places and as a significant consumption element for recreationists. As places become more homogeneous and standardized, their distinctiveness and diversity are weakened, making it difficult for recreationists to form local identity and emotional attachment [
2]. In the context of localization of recreation, through repeated interaction and complex connections between people and places, individuals are placed in familiar and meaningful environments, with local memories and emotions, resulting in the transformation of places from physical space to humanized emotional space. From this perspective, the sense of place is formed under the influence of placeness and its constructability. On the one hand, it can create a unique local image and emotional quality to satisfy the physiological and psychological needs of recreationists; on the other hand, it can enhance the sense of belonging and responsibility of recreationists, and stimulate their willingness to revisit and recommend the place. In addition, the localization of recreation is not just the exclusive discourse of local residents. In recent years, tourism has been showing the characteristics of “localization”, in which tourists show a tendency to converge with local residents in terms of preferences and behavioral patterns. An increasing number of tourists are widely integrated into the public space of destinations to experience the recreational activities preferred by local residents.
Temporal self-regulation theory (TST) has been described as a “viable, integrative framework for contemporary research” that synthesizes ideas from cognitive psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience into a relatively comprehensive “bio-psycho-social” model, which explains the multiple factors that influence people’s health behaviors [
3,
4]. According to TST, the capacity to be involved in behavior in accordance with long-range interests arises from a complex combination of biological, cognitive and social factors. With respect to personal behavioral choices, individuals intend to pursue behaviors that they believe are likely to have positive, immediate consequences. Individual differences in time perspective are associated with health-relevant decision-making processes [
5,
6]. TST has been widely used to explain and predict the occurrence of and change in individual health behaviors, including episodic drinking [
7], sugar-sweetened beverage consumption [
8], everyday smoking [
9], supplement use [
10] and medication adherence [
11]. There is a strong link between health behaviors and personal choices of recreational activities [
12]. Empirical studies in environmental and public health have shown that frequent participation in recreational activities can effectively reduce the risk of mental disorders and chronic diseases.
Recreational behavior is a typical personal decision-making behavior in a healthy life. TST allows for the good explanation and prediction of health behaviors. Similarities in underlying mechanisms of health and recreational behavior, as well as evidence in both fields for the importance of TST, indicate that the theory can be applied to recreational behavior. Hence, applying the theory to assess recreational behavior may allow for simultaneous assessment of structures that have an impact on behavior and provide a comprehensive explanation of the issue. Residents’ sense of place is a complicated and dynamic process that results from the long-term interaction between residents and recreation areas [
13]. This study constructed a moderated mediation model based on TST from the perspective of localization of recreation to investigate the behavioral characteristics of localized recreation and the formation mechanism of sense of place among urban residents. Using TST to explore the sense of place may be an essential process for identifying the potential relationships between important variables. The contributions of this study are as follows: first, in theory, it develops and extends the application of TST in the field of recreation behavior by applying it to the study of localization of recreation among urban residents; at the same time, it explores in depth the relationship among recreation involvement, recreation benefits and sense of place, which provides a powerful complement to urban park research from the perspective of demand. Second, in practice, this study explores important factors in the behavioral intention and decision-making process of localized recreation of residents, which helps to provide theoretical support and management suggestions for urban planning departments to reasonably meet the needs of localized recreation and improve the construction of localized recreation.
4. Study Design
4.1. Scale Development
The research questionnaire is divided into two parts. The first part is the central part of the questionnaire, including the scales of different variables. The measurement items of each variable in the model are from mature scales widely used in the relevant literature. Among them are (1) connectedness beliefs scales, which refer to the research of Hsu [
57] and Chiu [
58], four items in total; (2) temporal valuations, which mainly use the CFC scales developed by Feng Jiaxi [
59], three items in total; (3) recreation involvement variable, which mainly use the involvement scales developed by Li Qun [
60], six items in total; (4) recreation benefits, mainly based on the recreation benefit scales developed by Yin Jianjun [
61], five items in total; (5) sense of place variable, which refers to the research of Liu Qunyue [
62], six items in total. All variables were measured using a 5-point Likert scale. The second part is the personal information of tourists, which contained three demographic characteristics and four recreation behavior characteristics. The characteristics of individual recreation behavior were used as the main control variables [
63].
4.2. Case Parks
Due to the impact of COVID-19, recreation in parks is becoming a new way of life, the placeness contained in urban parks means important emotional significance to residents. We chose to collect data in urban parks of Beijing for two reasons: (1) Beijing has many urban parks which share obvious characteristics of large scale, diversity and balanced development, providing both tourism services for foreigners and leisure services for local residents [
64]. (2) The five case parks attract crowds of recreationists and serve a wide range of people, forming high-quality places for recreation with certain social influence. Therefore, they are very representative and typical in reflecting recreation behaviors.
Beijing Municipal Forestry and Parks Bureau has classified urban parks into: comprehensive parks, community parks, historical parks, ecological parks and cultural theme parks according to the main functions undertaken by the parks, with reference to Urban Green Space Classification Standard (CJJ/T85-2002) and Regulations of Beijing Municipal Parks. Specifically, comprehensive parks refer to parks with complete functions, well-equipped facilities and rich content, which can satisfy the diverse needs of different groups of visitors. Community parks refer to parks with necessary supporting facilities and activity areas, mainly serving the residents within a certain residential area for daily leisure activities. Historical parks refer to parks with outstanding historical and cultural value, which have had an impact on the urban transformation or cultural and artistic development of the city. Ecological parks refer to parks with natural environments characterized by original ecology or low human interference, which focus on meeting visitors’ needs to get close to nature, including forest parks, suburban parks, wetland parks, etc. Cultural theme parks refer to parks with special themes or cultures as their core content, including theme parks, botanical gardens, zoos and amusement parks.
Based on the classification of urban parks in Beijing by Tao Xiaoli [
65], five representative urban parks were selected as study areas, namely: comprehensive park (The Summer Palace), community park (The Black Bamboo Park), historical park (Temple of Heaven), ecological park (Olympic Forest Park) and cultural theme park (China National Botanical Garden). The locations of the case parks are shown in
Figure 3.
4.3. Data Collection
In the process of scale design, in order to ensure the accuracy and applicability of the scale, a presurvey was conducted with a total of 100 questionnaires distributed in the case parks from 6 April 2022 to 10 April 2022. The formal questionnaire was finally designed after analyzing the presurvey, deleting or revising ambiguous and unclear items. The presurvey results show that the Cronbach’s alpha of each construct is greater than 0.7, indicating that the scale has good reliability; the standardized factor loading values of each item are above 0.6, indicating that the scale has good construct validity.
The formal survey was carried out from 13 April 2022 to 28 April 2022. Recreationists were chosen using systematic random sampling in areas with numerous recreationists, every five recreationists passing through the areas were approached. Before conducting the questionnaire research, an optional question of “Are you a local resident?” was set to filter out non-target objects. After the recreationists had accepted the invitation, one research assistant informed them of the purpose of the survey, the confidentiality of information and the meanings of some incomprehensible concepts, and all chosen recreationists agreed to participate. A total of 600 questionnaires were collected, and after eliminating invalid data, 545 valid samples were obtained, with a completion rate of 90.83%.
4.4. Sample Characteristics
The statistical results of demographic characteristics are presented in
Table 1. It can be seen that among the valid samples, female respondents (50.5%) marginally outnumbered their male counterparts (49.5%), but the gender distribution was relatively even. The highest proportion of participants was aged 19 to 30, followed by those aged 31 to 45. Regarding physical condition, 36.5% of recreationists thought that they were in good health and 37.8% assessed their health as fair.
The descriptive statistical analysis of recreation behavior characteristics (
Table 2) showed that: recreationists spent mainly 1–2 h in the park, accounting for 35.2%; most recreationists engaged in recreational activities in the park less than 3 times or 3–15 times per month, accounting for 64.6%; traveling alone was the main travel mode, accounting for 30.6%; recreationists were mainly visitors in the neighborhood, accounting for 55.6%, followed by long-distance travelers (44.4%).
6. Conclusions and Discussion
6.1. Conclusions
In this paper, a moderated mediation model based on TST was constructed to explore the effect of connectedness beliefs and temporal valuations on sense of place, and to examine the mediating and moderating roles of recreation involvement and recreation benefits in the relationships. The study showed that:
- (1)
Connectedness beliefs and temporal valuations positively influenced sense of place, and they also had a positive indirect effect on sense of place through the mediating variable of recreation involvement. Given that a large number of scholars have verified the significant positive correlation between recreation involvement and sense of place [
66,
67], this study added two antecedent variables, connectedness beliefs and temporal valuations, based on the TST framework. Recreation involvement served as a significant predictor of sense of place and also as a mediating variable among connectedness beliefs, temporal valuations and sense of place. In recreational activities, the stronger the connectedness between present actions and anticipated outcomes, and the closer the values attached to temporally dispersed outcomes, the greater the sense of involvement in the activity and the more likely it is to generate a sense of place.
- (2)
Recreation benefits could significantly predict and positively influence sense of place. Greater recreation benefits increase the probability and degree of sense of place. Recreation benefits, as subjective evaluations of the individuals’ perceptions about the degree of satisfaction they achieve from recreational activities, can significantly influence participants’ attitudinal dispositions and behavioral performance. As the quality of recreation improves, residents feel a greater sense of dependence and identification with the recreation site, and they give positive feedback to the sense of place through feedback mechanisms, which will eventually manifest itself in residents’ attitudes towards choosing this place for ongoing recreation behavior.
- (3)
The moderating role of recreation benefits. This study examined the moderating role of recreation benefits in the paths, which could strengthen the positive relationship between recreation involvement and sense of place, that is, the more recreation benefits recreationists received, the stronger the positive effect of recreation involvement on sense of place. In addition, recreation benefits mediate the role of recreation involvement in mediating between connectedness beliefs, temporal valuations and sense of place, and the more recreation benefits recreationists received, the stronger the mediating role of recreation involvement in the relationship among connectedness beliefs, temporal valuations and sense of place.
6.2. Theoretical Implications
The theoretical contributions of this study were manifested as follows:
First, a TST model was first introduced into the research of recreation behavior, and recreation involvement, recreation benefits and sense of place variables were applied to the context of localization of urban residents’ recreation, enriching the TST empirical research results. On the one hand, individuals usually believe that recreation in parks can help individuals to improve their sense of well-being, belonging and attachment, which implies connectedness beliefs about park recreation. However, such behavior must last for a relatively long time in order to obtain these values or benefits, and individuals have to suffer from problems such as long travel distance, inconvenient transportation and lack of landscapes. As the values or benefits are not close in time, temporal valuations decrease and the degree of individual recreation involvement weakens as well. Past recreation behaviors in parks have brought benefits such as promoting physical and mental health and building social interactions, and these recreation benefits can boost individual recreation involvement to positively influence the formation of sense of place. After measuring the overall benefits and costs of recreation behaviors in parks, individuals reinforce the effects of recreation behaviors by themselves and strengthen the positive influence of each variable on sense of place. On the other hand, the flow of sense of place in TST is from one context to the next. Individuals have focused on temporal valuations, connectedness beliefs and recreation involvement for the next behavior after engaging in a successful recreation activity, and have stored recreation benefits such as pleasure and self-identity for themselves in the form of symbols, thus individuals have acquired and retained a sense of place, which will influence the recurrence of recreation behaviors.
Second, urban parks were used as study areas to explore the mechanisms of generating a sense of place for residents. While studies on sense of place based on psychology explore more about people’s relationships with relatively unfamiliar environments such as tourist destinations, studies on sense of place based on phenomenology focus more on people’s relationships with relatively familiar environments such as home and neighborhood communities. However, there are also many specific “places” that are between familiar and unfamiliar to people, which also deserve careful study, and urban parks are such special places, which are currently the subject of very few studies [
68]. The process of localization takes place in the context of the extensive connection between people and places, whose abundant habitual practices constitute substantial internal diversity, while the habitual practices based on places are intimately embedded in a broad spatial structure of social relations. This brings up an implicit question of the relationship between people and place: what sense of place is created in public recreational spaces such as urban parks? Based on the path of an empirical psychological approach, this study explores the mechanisms influencing the localization of recreation and the generation of sense of place among residents in five representative urban parks in Beijing, providing a powerful complement to urban park research from the perspective of demand.
Finally, using recreation benefits as a moderating variable, the mediation process between recreation involvement and sense of place was explained based on the perspective of recreation benefits. Recreation benefits, as the subjective evaluation of recreationists’ perceptions about their experience during recreation activities, are not only closely related to recreation involvement, but also have a positive impact on the sense of place. While existing studies tend to construct causal models with recreation benefits as dependent or mediating variables, this study argues that the moderating effect of recreation benefits needs to be further explored. Empirical evidence has found that recreation benefits could strengthen the positive relationship between recreation involvement and sense of place, and the more recreation benefits recreationists received, the stronger the mediating role of recreation involvement in the relationship among connectedness beliefs, temporal valuations and sense of place. This study uses recreation benefits as a moderating variable in the empirical analysis, reconstructing the connotation and extension of recreation benefits and providing new ideas for the boundary limitation of subsequent recreation benefits research.
6.3. Planning and Management Implications
Based on the TST framework, this study discusses the practical implications of localized recreation for park and city management.
First, as for park management, it is necessary (1) to innovate the interactive design of recreation space and set up interactive activities, such as horticulture, plant maintenance, landscape engineering and other gardening activities that recreationists can participate in. This can increase the degree of involvement and enthusiasm for interaction, and guide individuals to experience physical senses and internal emotions, thus enhancing recreation benefits for recreationists; (2) to integrate the unique local cultural elements and connotations into the renewal of public space through the construction of microspaces, creating a landscape image with local characteristics; (3) to focus on the deep emotional connection between people and places on the basis of meeting people’s basic physiological and psychological needs, developing a sense of place among recreationists; (4) to improve the functional division of parks, enhance the rationality of the layout and meet the needs and preferences of different groups for recreational activities, in order to ensure that recreationists have a pleasant experience in the park and extend their duration of stay; (5) to improve the infrastructure and service management of parks to enhance the willingness of recreationists to revisit and recommend the places.
Second, as for urban management, it is recommended (1) to adopt relevant policies on ticket reduction and exemption, and open the parks to the society for free or at preferential prices to reduce the cost of recreation, thus promoting the positive moderating effect of temporal self-regulation in residents’ travel; (2) to improve the level of public transportation services and optimize the connectivity between various parks and traffic arteries, thus enhancing the convenience and accessibility, increasing the frequency of trips; (3) to pay attention to public mental health, encourage residents to take local trips, introduce preferential measures such as cultural and travel consumption vouchers and advocate restoring individual emotions and energy through recreation in parks; (4) to enhance the openness of urban public spaces, create open green spaces with various characteristics, guide community activities and promote the popularization and normalization of outdoor recreation; (5) to construct a perfect urban nature system and build a network of green spaces to satisfy the requirements of residents to interact with nature and feel more connected to the environment.
6.4. Limitations and Future Research
As an exploratory study, the following three aspects can be investigated in future research, due to the limitations of the current research:
First, the data collection was conducted during the comprehensive epidemic prevention and control phase, and the epidemic management requirements and the need to maintain social distance may have an impact on the localization of recreation. The sample should be increased in the future after the end of the epidemic so that the generalizability of the study findings can be improved by comparing data before and after the pandemic.
Second, there is another situation for the localization of recreation: the “residentization” of foreign tourists, which means that foreign tourists behave more like residents in terms of tourism consumption patterns and behavioral preferences. In future research, the differences in behavioral characteristics of localization of recreation and the formation mechanisms of sense of place between foreign tourists and local residents can be compared to enhance the integrity of the theory.
Third, in the design and test of the model, this study creatively drew on the TST framework model proposed by Hall and Fong, which is an extension of the application of TST in the field of recreational behavior, but it failed to comprehensively apply the TST model. In the future, a combination of multiple research methods will be used to verify the applicability of TST in more fields.
Fourth, this study explored the formation mechanisms of sense of place and provided a new opportunity to better understand it, but still failed to fully open the black box of psychological mechanisms of sense of place. Sense of place is a complex theory and future research should add more psychological derivative structures to the existing model in order to explore the inner workings of sense of place to a greater extent.
In a sense, urban recreation space is shaped by globalization and localization, and with the coexistence and interaction of the global and the local, new social and cultural practices emerge, all of which point to the individual’s imagination of “localization” and important formative factors. Therefore, when recreation space becomes uniform due to globalization, the concept of “localization” needs to be reconsidered and reinterpreted. “Localization” should be extended to urban residents’ recreation decisions, based on the needs of residents for local recreation, to explore the spirit of place and the way of self-rest in urban parks, then interpret it in a completely new way and maximize its value, so that recreation can return to the essence of “life”.