The role of urban parks in delivering cultural ecosystem services related to outdoor recreation is widely acknowledged. Yet, the question remains as to whether the recreational opportunities of parks meet the demands of increasingly multicultural societies and whether recreational patterns vary at spatial scales. In a pan-European survey, we assessed how people use urban parks (in five cities, N = 3814) and how recreational patterns relate to respondents’ sociocultural and geographical contexts (using 19 explanatory variables). Our results show that across Europe (i) respondents share a general pattern in their recreational activities with a prevalence for the physical uses of parks, especially taking a walk; (ii) the geographic context matters, demonstrating a high variety of uses across the cities; and that (iii) the sociocultural context is also important; e.g., the occupation and biodiversity valuations of respondents are significantly associated with the uses performed. The sociocultural context matters particularly for physical park uses and is associated to a lesser extent with nature-related uses. Given that our results attest to a high variety of park uses between sociocultural groups and the geographical context, we conclude that it is important to consider the specific backgrounds of people to enhance recreational ecosystem services in greenspace development.

人们普遍认识到城市公园在提供与户外休闲有关的文化生态系统服务中的作用。然而，问题仍然在于公园的休闲机会是否能满足日益多元的文化社会的需求，以及休闲模式是否在空间尺度上有所变化。在一项泛欧洲的调查中，我们评估了人们如何使用城市公园（在五个城市中，N  = 3814）以及娱乐方式与受访者的社会文化和地理环境之间的关系（使用19个解释变量）。我们的结果表明，在整个欧洲（i），受访者在娱乐活动中具有普遍的模式，普遍喜欢公园的物理用途，尤其是散步；（二）地理环境很重要，展示了整个城市的多种用途；（iii）社会文化背景也很重要；例如，受访者的职业和生物多样性评估与所执行的使用有很大关系。社会文化背景对公园的使用尤其重要，在较小程度上与自然相关。鉴于我们的结果证明了社会文化群体与地理环境之间公园用途的多样性，我们得出结论，重要的是要考虑人们的特定背景，以增强绿地开发中的休闲生态系统服务。