Urban Planning and Transportation Group, Department of the Built Environment, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, 1-5 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge CB2 1PX, UK.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Feb 1;18(3):1287. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18031287.
The research of comfort in urban public spaces has become increasingly important for improving environmental quality and encouraging people spend more time in outdoor activities. Among numerous approaches to understand comfort perception, the rational indices based on heat balance theory have prevailed to guide the research and practice in urban planning, design, and management. The limitations of a solely rational index-based approach reveal the necessity for a more comprehensive understanding of comfort by considering a wider range of influential factors from both individual and environmental perspectives during the assessing process. This study conceptualizes individuals' comfort in urban public spaces as a latent construct, which is measured by indicators regarding perceptions on multifarious meteorological variables. The conceptual framework has been introduced involving hypothetical relationships among individuals' comfort, attitudes, and environmental perceptions in urban public spaces. A series of field work including microclimate measurements and questionnaire-based surveys were carried out in two public squares in Changsha, China. Based on the dataset derived from 372 questionnaires and related meteorological measurements, this paper examines the relationships between the physical microclimatic variables, individuals' socio-demographical characteristics and environmental attitudes and perceptions, and outdoor comfort assessment. The estimation results of the structural equation model quantitatively verified the conceptual framework at large, as many hypothetical relationships are identified, which indicates the importance of individuals' role and the psychological factors in modeling comfort perception. This approach improves the understanding of comfort assessment, contributes to improving the quality of urban environment and the practices of urban planning and management.
城市公共空间舒适度研究对于改善环境质量、鼓励人们更多地参与户外活动变得越来越重要。在理解舒适度感知的众多方法中，基于热平衡理论的理性指标已被广泛应用于城市规划、设计和管理的研究和实践中。单纯基于理性指标的方法的局限性表明，在评估过程中需要从个体和环境的角度考虑更广泛的影响因素，从而对舒适度有一个更全面的理解。本研究将城市公共空间中个体的舒适度概念化为一个潜在的构念，通过对各种气象变量的感知指标进行测量来评估。该概念框架引入了个体在城市公共空间中的舒适度、态度和环境感知之间的假设关系。本研究在中国长沙的两个公共广场进行了一系列现场工作，包括微气候测量和基于问卷的调查。基于 372 份问卷和相关气象测量数据，本文检验了物理微气候变量、个体的社会人口统计学特征与环境态度和感知以及户外舒适度评估之间的关系。结构方程模型的估计结果从定量上验证了该概念框架，因为识别出了许多假设关系，这表明在舒适度感知建模中个体的作用和心理因素的重要性。这种方法提高了舒适度评估的理解，有助于提高城市环境质量和城市规划与管理的实践水平。
