The Quality Inequity of the Ecosystem Services delivered by Green Spaces: Evidence from 226 Urban Parks in Hangzhou, China

Green spaces are vital for the urban ecosystem, providing urban residents with diverse ecosystem services. However, the heterogeneity in spatial locations and landscape configurations, caused the variousness of ecosystem services quality of green spaces. Previous studies mainly examined the spatial equity of ecosystem services based on quantitative factors like distance and scale. However, the quality equity of ecosystem service of green space remains unclear. We studied 226 urban park green spaces(UPGS) in Hangzhou and constructed the Ecosystem Service Quality Index (ESQI) to evaluate regional equity and analyze driving factors by the Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve. Results showed that (1) 77.43% of urban parks had moderately low ESQIs (0.100–0.230), with spatially heterogeneous distribution. (2) There was a high degree of spatial unfairness regarding the park area, the number of points of interest of service facilities, the proportion of water bodies, the effective grid area, the number of patches, and the total edge length. (3) Heterogeneity in the spatial distribution and internal landscape patterns of UPGSs caused significant spatial unfairness in ecosystem service quality. (4) The main driving factors influencing the ecosystem services quality consisted with natural factors(green cover and impervious cove) and location factors(Park Cooling Index). The quantitative characteristics of urban green space cannot reflect the level of ecosystem service quality. Urban ecological construction should not simply focus on increasing the UPGSs quantity, rather it is more crucial to improve the ecosystem services quality of UPGS.