Minh-Hoang Nguyen, Thi Mai Anh Tran, Ni Putu Wulan Purnama Sari, Thanh Tu Tran, Quan-Hoang Vuong
Urban planting projects are increasingly promoted as cost-effective interventions to enhance ecological resilience and human well-being in rapidly urbanizing cities. Yet limited empirical evidence exists on how urban residents prioritize different planting attributes and how these priorities vary across socio-demographic, motivational, and cultural contexts—particularly in Southeast Asia. Drawing on Granular Interaction Thinking Theory (GITT) and the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), this study examines how urban residents in Vietnam prioritize five key aspects of public park flora-planting projects: quantity, variety, aesthetics, spatial location, and utilities. Using survey data from 535 urban residents across Northern, Central, and Southern Vietnam, we estimate five Bayesian multilevel models and reveal pronounced heterogeneity in preferences. Education is positively associated with prioritizing flora variety and aesthetics but negatively associated with utilities, whereas income shows the positive association with utilities, highlighting divergent roles of cultural and economic capital. Relaxation-oriented park users prioritize quantity, aesthetics, and location while de-emphasizing utilities, whereas socially and pragmatically oriented users emphasize variety, spatial distribution, and utilities. Utilities display a stable baseline demand across regions, while aesthetic preferences vary culturally, with suggestive evidence of stronger aesthetic prioritization in Central Vietnam. Overall, aesthetic considerations are prioritized more frequently than utilities, indicating a potential—but unevenly stratified—transition toward an eco-surplus culture. These findings demonstrate that urban greening preferences are context-dependent, motivation-driven configurations rather than uniform demands, underscoring the need for pluralistic and zoned park-planning strategies that accommodate diverse human–nature relationships. © 2026 Elsevier GmbH.
Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University, Hanoi, Viet Nam; College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, United States; Faculty of Nursing, Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University, East Java, Indonesia; Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark; University College, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea