دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی حفاری در ریشه های رفتاری باغبانی شهری - الزویر 2018

Urban green spaces make a significant contribution to the social and ecological environment in cities, and the decisions of green space managers have direct impacts at both local and city scales. However most studies have focussed on public green spaces, despite privately managed gardens collectively forming a large proportion of urban green. The aim of this qualitative paper is to understand why people become involved in gardening and why they choose environmentally friendly gardening practices. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 gardeners in Lausanne, Switzerland and analysed them according to their content. Three major themes emerged as motivations for gardening: wellbeing, social aspects, and outputs (both tangible, such as food, and intangible, such as the feeling of having produced food). Motivations for gardening practices were grouped into extrinsic factors, such as practical constraints, inspiration from neighbours, following regulations, and social controls; and intrinsic, which were primarily based on knowledge and experience. Our results provide some evidence of the tangible and beneficial outcomes of gardening and provide additional support to urban decision makers with an interest in the management of urban green spaces.

Conclusions

Although often small individually, Urban gardens have a cumulative effect on the environment, both directly and indirectly, as well as individual and broader social effects. The management of these gardens, and selection of certain gardening practices over others, influences the overall socio-ecological effects of the garden. Gardening is in general a popular leisure activity and in order to better understand the effects of that  activity, both on the gardeners and on the gardens, it is necessary to better understand the influences on gardeners. In this paper we aimed to gain an understanding of the motivations of urban gardeners in Lausanne, Switzerland, both for choosing gardening as a form of leisure and for choosing environmentally friendly gardening practices. This study expands upon the existing body of research by posing these questions in a different socio-ecological context. When interpreting these results however, it should be remembered that this study was qualitative, and findings that did not echo the findings of prior research may indicate phenomena that are context specific, but may also be due to the methodology. Further quantitative investigation into the characteristics and motivations of gardeners would overcome this limitation and provide future researchers with evidence to identify which results are truly generalizable.

Three major themes emerged as motivations for engaging in gardening: wellbeing, social aspects of gardening, and outputs (both tangible and intangible). These findings are in agreement with those of Pourias et al. (2016) who found that “the food function”, although dominant, was accompanied by a range of motivations that can be seen as being related to social and physical wellbeing. Given that the study by Pourias et al. (2016) included both allotment gardeners and community gardeners, it appears that these motivations may be transferrable across contexts. On the other hand, the findings by Ruggeri et al. (2016) that increased healthiness of self-grown food and socializing motivations were not regarded as relevant suggests there might indeed be a contextual component in interpreting the food function, with food security playing a greater role for less affluent gardeners and food quality playing a greater role for wealthier gardeners such as those in Lausanne.