Nature proximity contributes to improving many people’s health. In urban areas, how to increase the gaining of health benefits from urban green space (UGS) has gradually become a topic of concern for urban planners and public health practitioners. However, studies that can make causal inferences and evidence from developing countries and societies are still limited, and little has been done to address the issue of equity. Using data gathered in face-to-face surveys from 997 visitors to the Beijing Olympic Forest Park, we applied the instrumental variable approach to analyze park visit benefits to human physical and mental health, and explore ways that can help motivate visits and enhance equitable use. The results show that the overweight had more frequent visits, indicating that people with less-than-ideal health status might feel the urgency in improving their health and choose to engage in more recreation. In this sense, UGS showed a tendency to provide means for a certain group of people to proactively improve health. The study also solidifies the mid-term stress-relieving effect of park recreation that increased with visiting frequency, and found that visits to different types of UGS should all be beneficial, and do not have to be to large green parks. While distance is a decisive factor in encouraging UGS visits, route friendliness was found to have a complementing role, implying that creating routes to UGS that are more conducive to non-motorized travel (walking and cycling) could be seen as an important instrument. Both the incentives to park visitation and stress-relieving effect are more pronounced in elder groups, indicating higher potentials of such an approach in cities with an aging population. In terms of equity, differences in knowledge and income levels associated with use levels indicated inequitable use. To promote inclusiveness, the policy could start by increasing people’s recognition of health benefits derived from UGS recreation through for example publicity programs. The study could bring implications for planning practitioners to leverage health potentials from increased and equitable use of UGS. Limitations of the study includes: (1) given the nature of cross-sectional data, the possibility of two-way causality cannot be ruled out, and (2) the study was conducted in one park and only park visitors were surveyed. In the future, researchers could consider conducting multi-period surveys, and to look at the city level to include all kinds of recreational UGS, and, if possible, to cover all residents.

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Village-level social capital is an important factor to promote rural revitalization, but it is often ignored by existing researches. Based on the field investigation on 357 grape industry villages in Ningling County of Henan Province, decomposed village social capital into three dimensions (social network, social norm and social trust), this paper aims to discuss how village social capital influences rural industry development by promoting crop specialization. Results showed that the social network affects the transmission of grape planting information and technology. The richer the social network, the faster the diffusion of grape planting and the faster the realization of crop specialization. However, different types of social network play different roles. Social norms affect whether villages participate in grape production decisions. Proper risk awareness and efficient and reliable social organization services can help village farmers participate in grape planting and improve the level of crop specialization. Social trust affects the scale and duration of grape planting in a village; that is, the higher the level of social trusts, the higher the degree of crop specialization. In short, social capital can effectively promote the rapid cultivation of superior crops, enhance the specialization level of agricultural production and drive the coordinated development of upstream and downstream industries, thereby promoting the development of rural industries. This study emphasizes that, in the process of rural revitalization, developing countries should consider the social environments of different regions, fully mobilize the power of local social capital and develop reasonable and feasible technology popularization, adoption and implementation programs.