Is more always better? Exploring field survey and social media indicators of quality of urban greenspace, in relation to health

Despite the growing body of research exploring health benefits of greenspace, most studies treat greenspace as homogenous. There remains a need to focus on 'quality' rather than quantity of greenspace. Quality may be a substantial determinant for use and experience within greenspaces and therefore may influence health and wellbeing benefits derived from that use. This small-area level ecological study was undertaken within the city of Sheffield, UK. Health data were drawn from the general health question within the 2011 UK Census. Greenspace quality was measured using field surveys by Sheffield City Council and a range of measures from social media (from Flickr and Twitter). The extent to which quality measures extracted from social media were comparable to those from field surveys was explored to investigate whether they could proxy quality thus negating the requirement for resource intensive field surveys. The potential greenspace quality proxies from social media, however, showed low levels of correlation with quality measures from detailed field surveys. In exploring levels of health associated with greenspace quality - after adjustment for potential confounders - we found that greenspaces with lower quality, in terms of cleanliness, were associated with higher prevalence of self-reported poor health. The prevalence ratio of poor health for the quintile with the lowest cleanliness was 1.09 (95% CI 1.00-1.18), compared against the quintile with the highest cleanliness. We found little evidence of association between social media indicators of quality and poor health. Our work indicates that cleanliness of greenspace may affect adversely the health of surrounding residents. Whilst the precise mechanism for this is not yet known it is suggested that lack of cleanliness produces feelings of discomfort and insecurity, discouraging greenspace usage and inhibiting accrual of potential health and well-being benefits associated with that usage. This has important implications for greenspace provision and management.