How Do Cultural Ecosystem Services Affect Visitor Emotions? Evidence from Social Media Data in Shanghai Urban Parks

Hanhan Shu^1,2*

• ¹University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
• ²The University of Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Traditional Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) CES assessments rely heavily on questionnaires or interviews, which struggle to capture large-scale user perceptions and lack classification frameworks tailored to Chinese contexts. Drawing on large volumes of social media texts from five representative urban parks in Shanghai, this study proposes an integrated quantitative framework—LDA topic modeling–CES classification system–sentiment analysis–linear mixed-effects modeling (LMM)—to identify visitors' perceived CES features and evaluate their influence on emotional experiences. First, the LDA model was used to extract five CES categories, and an expert-annotated system adapted to the Chinese linguistic and cultural context was developed. The results show that Recreation and Family Engagement and Symbolic and Inspirational Landscapes are the most frequently perceived CES, whereas Education and Cognitive Engagement is least prominent. Sentiment analysis indicates that visitors' emotions are highly positive overall (with "Very Positive" exceeding 83%) and exhibit a seasonal pattern characterized by higher positivity in spring and autumn and lower levels in winter and summer. The LMM results further reveal significant differences in how various CES types affect emotional responses. Recreation and Family Engagement and Symbolic and Inspirational Landscapes significantly enhance positive emotions, while Education and Cognitive Engagement shows a weak negative association in some cases—reflecting characteristics of textual expression rather than the actual effects of educational activities. Overall, this study provides a methodological pathway for large-scale CES quantification and demonstrates the potential of social media text analysis in uncovering cultural experiences and emotional responses in urban parks. The findings offer scientific insights for park planning, experience optimization, and the design of emotionally supportive urban public spaces.