The Role of Satisfaction and Emotional Response in the Choice Mechanisms of Suburban Natural-Areas Users

Abstract

The unique observations and experiences of users of suburban natural areas lead them to perceive their surroundings in a manner associated with their personal values. It follows that every individual has a unique cognitive decision-making structure. This paper examines users' affective and cognitive evaluation of a particular suburban natural area by applying the means-end chain method to reveal the cognitive mechanism by which users link the attributes and benefits of an environmental public good with their own personal values. Analysis of a survey conducted of visitors to a Spanish suburban natural area (park) reveals the main attributes to be the opportunity to practice sports and proximity of the park and the main potential benefits to be the improvement of physical and psychological well-being. The desired personal values include fun, quality of life and self-fulfillment at the individual level and improved social relationships at the collective level. The paper also tests for cross-group, cognitive-structure differences in visitor groups, segmented by level of satisfaction and reported range of emotions, and finds that perceived physical and psychological health improvements and individual and social awareness increase with higher levels of satisfaction and emotional response. Therefore, the recommendations for natural area management suggested by these findings include enhancing the scenic beauty and peacefulness of suburban natural areas in order to improve the affective state of visitors because this could contribute to reducing social costs (including health care) within the area of influence of the natural area.

Exploring the spatial distribution of social impacts in protected areas

“…As proximity cannot be seen in isolation as an indicator explaining perceived social impacts we also tested whether other social parameters influence perceptions. We used indicators that have been highlighted in the literature as potential predictors of people's perceptions for PAs (Lopez-Mosquera and Sanchez, 2012;Steg et al, 2018;Lin and Lockwood, 2014;Wynveen et al, 2015;Cherry et al, 2018;Bennett et al, 2019;Jones et al, 2020b). Apart from location, one of the most important parameters explaining perceived social impacts was place attachment.…”

“…Regarding the independent variables a number of socio-economic indicators were captured which have been identified in the literature as potential determinants of people's perceptions of PAs (Table 2). These included: a) place attachment (Lin and Lockwood, 2014); b) subjective wellbeing (Jones et al, 2020b); c) trust in institutions managing the PA (Cherry et al, 2018;Bennett et al, 2019); d) demographics (gender, age, education and income) and e) personal socio-environmental values (Stern et al, 1999;Lopez-Mosquera and Sanchez, 2012;Wynveen et al, 2015). A detailed description of dependent variables (impacts) and independent variables is provided in Table 2.…”

Now is the time to embrace interactive electronic applications of Association Pattern Technique

“…To this effect, Vriens and Ter Hofstede (2000) highlighted the marketing implications of APT, explaining its potential as a tool that could direct new product development, brand assessment and brand positioning, advertising strategy development as well as market segmentation. More recently, APT studies have been useful in the design of new marketing strategies (Escobar and Gil, 2016), market segmentation (Kang et al, 2013;Lopez-Mosquera and Sanchez, 2012;López-Mosquera and Sánchez, 2013), product development (Moghimi et al, 2017), product/ brand positioning (Barrena et al, 2015a), and even in the design of an entire marketing mix (Lee et al, 2014). Opportunities for researchers to explore the use of the APT in other domains are limitless.…”

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“…Some researches applied means-end theory to grasp satisfaction. They are for example, (Lopez-Mosquera, N and Sanchez, M, 2012;Gallarza et al, 2009). Others also applied the same theory to explore motivation which might represent performance.…”