Housing prices are determined by a variety of factors, including the features of the building and the neighborhood environment, and a potential buyer decides to buy a house after reviewing these factors and concluding that it is worth the price. We used Hedonic Price Methods to find the relationship between monetary value of house and access conditions to urban parks. Two meaningful results were discovered in this study: first, as the distance from the park increases, the value of the park inherent in the housing price decreases; second, the greater walking accessibility, to the park, the higher the park value inherent in housing prices. Despite presenting shorter distances to walk and more entrances, poorly accessible zones were deemed as such due to the necessity of crossing an arterial road. This indicates that the results can define accessibility not as the Euclidian distance but as the shortest walking distance while considering crossroads and park entrances. The results of this study have significant implications for urban park economic impact analyses in Seoul. Also, the increase in housing prices closer to parks supports the idea that access is dependent on the residents’ socioeconomic status. Lastly, the results of this study can improve walking accessibility to the park.

Resident participation is crucial to the success of tourism development at community-level destinations. This study examines the effect of residents’ participation on their support for tourism development at the community level through a case study of Gamcheon Culture Village, South Korea. Using the structural equation model (SEM), including the variables of participation of tourism development, community attachment, economic dependence, perceived positive impacts, perceived negative impacts, and attitude toward tourism development, this study found that participation in tourism development significantly influences residents’ attitude toward development. Residents’ participation not only directly affects their attitude toward tourism development, but also indirectly influences it by increasing their positive perception of tourism development. Results empirically reveal that resident participation is critical to tourism development, especially for destinations at the local level.

In recent years, the Korean public has become aware of the form of air pollution known as particulate matter, with a consequent growth of public anxiety causing a negative risk perception about outdoor activity. This study aims at determining the causal relationship between risk perceptions about particulate matter and outdoor activity satisfaction in South Korea. An Internet survey was conducted with 412 people, and a structural equation model was used to perform confirmatory factor analysis. The statistically significant results show that the perceived risk of particulate matter is higher when people do not show interest in or trust public opinion or policy on the subject. This increases people’s perceptions of health risks, which in turn lowers their satisfaction with outdoor activity. Although trust levels in public opinion or policy had a positive impact on outdoor activity satisfaction, this was not statistically significant. These results are expected to contribute to risk communication guidelines in public opinion reporting and to the direction of environmental health policies in developing countries with high levels of air pollution, such as particulate matter.

Tropospheric ozone impacts the health and productivity of forest ecosystems. The concentration of ozone on Earth will increase in the future, particularly in China and its neighboring countries, including Korea, due to a projected rise in nitrogen dioxide and ozone precursors as a result of China’s emissions. This study aims to estimate the effect of changes in ozone concentration and climate change on the forests in Korea, based on expected nitrogen dioxide emissions in Korea and China in the future. To do this, we developed an empirical model that represents the statistical relationship between the net primary productivity (NPP) of the forests and ozone concentration using historical data; and, estimated the future NPP of the forests under future ozone concentration scenarios based on nitrogen dioxide emissions of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. The analysis suggests that the ozone concentration begin exerting effects to the NPP, about 68.10 tC/km²/year decrement per 0.01 ppm increment. We estimated that the NPP of Korean forests has been reduced by 8.25% due to the current concentration of ozone, and the damage is estimated to increase to a range between 8.47% and 10.55% in the 2050s, and between 5.85% and 11.15% in the 2090s depending on the scenarios.

한국조경학회지(Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture)

The purpose of this study is to predict changes in the season for outdoor water activities due to climate change. Nine public outdoor swimming pools in three megacities of South Korea (Seoul, Daegu, and Busan) were selected as study sites. To determine the preferred weather conditions for outdoor water activities, the preference functions of weather elements for outdoor water activities were structured by finding the best-fitting lines with the Z-score of the number of visitors, which is calculated for each swimming pool each year, and the inflection points or the stabilized point of preference functions are set as thresholds for preferred weather conditions for outdoor water activities. To predict changes in the preferred season for outdoor water activities, future weather data for the 2030s, 2060s, and 2090s derived from RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) scenarios are adapted to the thresholds of preferred weather conditions. The results of this study show that the preferred temperature range for outdoor water activities is: 24.6 °C to 35.0 °C in Seoul, 25.5 °C to 35.5 °C in Daegu, and 27.4 °C to 34.4 °C in Busan, and that the maximum threshold for precipitation is: 36.5 mm in Seoul, 31.5 mm in Daegu, and 26.5 mm in Busan. The results of this study show that the preferred season for outdoor water activities will expand compared to its current duration due to warmer temperatures in the future, and the preferred period for these activities will shift from June to September to May to June and September to October due to extremely hot weather in July and August beginning in the 2030s. The results of this study imply that there will be major changes in the demand and operation of outdoor water activities due to climate change, making it necessary to begin preparations to combat and respond to climate change.