The value of a cultural ecosystem service depends on the perception of different cultural service categories. However, the data sources used in research on the perception of cultural service have limitations that mainly depend on social investigation, leading to slow progress in cultural service evaluation. With the advent of the era of network big data, social media provides a new data source for the study of cultural ecosystem service perception, so that the study of these services is expected to make new breakthroughs. Using search crawler software, this paper reviewed 7257 online comments related to 19 city parks in Xuzhou City, China. With the help of Rost Content mining semantic analysis software, the comment sentences were divided into keywords, and the Delphi expert method was used to classify these keywords. Thus, a cultural service perception database was established. Through statistical analysis, with the help of ArcGIS software, various cultural services were analyzed. The results showed that (1) the cultural services of urban parks could be divided into seven types (i.e., aesthetics, recreation, sports, inspiration, education, cultural heritage, and spiritual satisfaction) using social network comment data. (2) High-frequency keywords of online comment data can serve as the core basis during an analysis of the perception of cultural services by visitors of city parks. However, a large gap exists in the number of high frequency keywords in different parks. For example, Yunlong Lake Park has 2887 keywords, while Kuaizai Ting Park has only 33. (3) Differences exist in the perception of cultural service in urban parks, the park’s scale, and characteristics determine the visitor’s cultural service perception level. The aesthetic and recreation types were the most easily perceived, and 68% and 63% parks have the above two perceptual records, respectively. Therefore, the social media comment data has the ability to document perception of each park’s cultural service type and its differences, which can serve as the cultural ecosystem service perception as well as the valuation data source, to supplement the social investigation.

This paper applies a general spatial equilibrium model to investigate the effect that distance within the urban hierarchy can have on interurban house prices. Our spatial model predicts a negative price gradient towards higher-tier cities, which can be decomposed into a ‘productivity component’ and an ‘amenity component’, representing respectively the effect of wage differences and households’ valuation of access to higher-order services. The theoretical findings are tested on data for the hierarchical urban system of the Pan-Yangtze River Delta in China. Both central and subcentral cities are shown to impose statistically significant distance penalties on interurban house prices, even after we control for amenities and characteristics that are generally considered to be the determinants of house prices. According to the empirical decomposition, the negative house price gradients are largely accounted for by the productivity component.

Wetlands provide many essential ecosystem services for human well-being. The ecological assessment of wetland ecosystem services is problematic and thus is an important focus in the field of ecological research. In this study, an ecological assessment system containing the ecosystem product value, ecosystem regulation service value, and ecosystem cultural service value was established to calculate the gross ecosystem product in the Nansi Lake Wetland, China. Based on remote sensing images, field studies, and literature reviews, the gross ecosystem product was estimated for the years 1985, 1992, 2005, 2011, and 2017. The results showed that the gross ecosystem product of the Nansi Lake Wetland increased from 40.91 × 10⁸ USD in 1985 to 46.28 × 10⁸ USD in 2017. The gross ecosystem product of the altered wetlands increased by about 8.5 times with a rising linear relationship, while natural wetlands presented a nonlinear relationship. Furthermore, except for the changes in climatic condition, anthropogenic interference factors such as coal mining activities, farming practices, and government policies have promoted significant services in the Nansi Lake Wetland over the past 30 years. This study could provide important insight into the ecological assessment of wetland ecosystems and thus inform policy for the protection and better use of wetland resources.

Cross‐city spillovers among housing markets are usually modelled by the classical spatial autoregressive models, which usually suffer from identification problems in practice. This paper investigates the cross‐city house price spillovers arising from city network externalities wherein a city's connections with other cities in the urban network create the external house price premium through productivity and amenity gains. Using a cross‐sectional data set for an urban system in eastern China, we present significant evidence for positive network spillovers by the application of spatial lag of X model and spatial Durbin error model. Besides, common shocks are also proved to be responsible for cross‐city dependence of house prices.

As China rapidly urbanizes, land resources tend to deplete. This paper aims to identify and propose a resolution of land use conflicts to promote sustainable land use and coordinate the interaction between humans and the environment in urban areas. The methodology of land use conflict assessment within spatial zoning of the Su–Xi–Chang region was evaluated. Taking into consideration the intensity of human activities and the background condition of the natural environment, we divided the study area into a few regions. Furthermore, we developed a methodology by calculating landscape complexity, fragility, and stability based on spatial zoning so as to derive the spatio-temporal characteristics of the land use conflict index (LUCI) in the Su–Xi–Chang region. The results indicate the following: (1) According to the urban spatial attribute index (USAI) statistics, we delineate the core, fringe, and suburban zones of the Su–Xi–Chang region, which accounted for 9.61%, 11.06%, and 79.33% of urban agglomerations respectively; (2) from 1990 to 2018, the fragility index (FI) and LUCI showed S-shaped curves, while the complexity (CI) and the stability indices (SI) exhibited minor fluctuations in the fringe and suburb zones; and (3) intensive and severe conflict is concentrated in core areas due to quite intense human activities and in fringe areas due to an increased interaction between humans and land, while moderate conflict is mainly found in rural and suburban areas that pose as a natural environmental space. The results can serve as a theoretical framework for an effective identification of the LUCI in an urban agglomeration and coordination of the optimal allocation of regional land resources.