Aging and urbanization significantly impact the physical and mental well-being of the elderly population. Empirical investigations have highlighted the contribution of the built environment to promoting elderly health. However, there is a need for further exploration of the factors within the built environment that impact the subjective well-being (SWB) of the elderly. To address this, this study selected 50 communities in Guangzhou, where 1403 elderly people were surveyed. Employing the random forest, we have identified contributing factors of the built environment affecting the SWB of the elderly. Meanwhile, we used a prediction model constructed by random forest to predict the SWB level of the elderly. The results indicated that accessibility to parks (positive emotions (PA): 0.822, positive experiences (PE): 0.235), hospitals (PA: 0.680, PE: 0.546), and supermarkets (PA: 0.237, PE: 0.617) significantly contributed to PA and PE. On the other hand, factors such as population density had a significant contribution to negative emotions (NA: 0.431) and negative experiences (NE: 0.194). Based on the prediction results, the spatial distribution of SWB among the elderly can be derived. Overall, our study can provide planning and improvement strategies for built environments that promote SWB among the elderly.

Nature-based education, characterized by authentic contexts and experiential learning, has increasingly been recognized as a potentially effective educational approach for fostering sustainable development literacy among university students. This study aimed to examine the influence of nature-based education on university students’ sustainable development behavior. It further investigated the sequential mediating roles of sustainability knowledge and attitudes. A cross-sectional self-administered questionnaire survey was conducted among 1248 university students across 21 prefecture-level cities in China. Data were analyzed using SPSS (Version 28.0) and SmartPLS (Version 4.0). Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to test the hypothesized model and assess the relationships among latent constructs. The results indicated that nature-based education was positively associated with sustainability knowledge (β = 0.337, p < 0.001) and, to a lesser extent, sustainability attitudes (β = 0.106, p < 0.01), but had no significant direct effect on sustainable development behavior. Instead, sustainability attitudes mediated the knowledge–behavior relationship, while sustainability knowledge and attitudes jointly formed a significant sequential mediation pathway.

Tourism commercialization poses growing challenges to the preservation of authenticity in historic districts. Current conservation practices often focus on physical spaces, yet may overlook the integrity of “Scenes” as an integration of material and intangible elements, potentially leading to a fragmented loss of authenticity. To systematically quantify the impact mechanism of authenticity in historic districts, this study, based on the Scenes Theory, constructs a comprehensive analytical framework that integrates morphological indicators and social perception. Taking the Historic Urban Area of Kraków, Poland (including the Old Town and Kazimierz District) as the empirical case, the study combines the “Morpho” urban morphological indicator system with the OLS regression model to identify representative cultural scenes and analyze the intrinsic connections between facility configuration, activity types, and authenticity values. The results suggest that: Cultural facilities and interactive activities are core drivers of authenticity (Local, State, Ethnic); Commercial facilities exert a double-edged sword effect on authenticity—moderate commercialization facilitates rational perception, while excessive commercialization generates negative impacts; Residential functions play a positive role in maintaining the authenticity of the rational dimension. This study tentatively advances Scenes Theory as a spatial heritage management tool, bridges objective morphological analysis and subjective perception research, and offers preliminary actionable insights for differentiated conservation of multi-layered historic cities worldwide. The findings also highlight the educational potential of authentic cultural environments in fostering youth cultural identity, place attachment, and value formation.