Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 6, 2019 | 1 Users’ Behaviors and Evaluations of Allotment Gardens —An empirical research of four allotment gardens in Beijing Meng YE*, Tomohiko YOSHIDA** Abstract: The demand for allotment gardens is increasing at unprecedented rates in Beijing, China, and allotment gardens have also shown a trend towards being developed by civilians, but little is known regarding users’ characteristics, user behaviors, user evaluations, and their differences, all of which are essential for the improvement of allotment gardens in terms of satisfying their users and being preserved in China’s urban areas. The allotment garden’s overall evaluation is between good and general, with high evaluations given to landscape and facilities, including public facilities, infrastructures, and landscape environments, with low evaluations given to service and guidance, agricultural festival activities, rent, sanitary facilities, and skilled labor. Users’ evaluations about the provision of farm tools, seeds, and fertilizers, as well as sanitary facilities have positive impacts on an allotment garden’s overall evaluation. Users are inclined to give positive overall evaluations in case in which the allotment garden is equipped with sufficient and premium farm tools, seeds, and fertilizers, as well as clean sanitary facilities. Overall, the evaluations of northern and southern allotment gardens are statistically significantly different, in that northern gardens are better evaluated than their southern counterparts. There are statistically significant differences in terms of the overall evaluation of allotment gardens among the four operation modes. The consortium mode earned the best evaluation, whereas the individual mode had the lowest evaluation. Keywords: allotment garden, user behavior, user evaluation, evaluation difference, impact factor 1. Introduction The United Nations has disclosed a prediction that there would be nearly 5 billion urban inhabitants globally by 2030, an increase of 40% (Kabischa & Haasea, 2014)1), and that urban land will increase by 1.5 million km2 by 2030, tripling their baseline estimate of 0.7 million km2 based on MODIS 2001 (Seto et al., 2011).2) However, more than one-half of the world population lives in urban areas without access to agricultural land, according to the European Environmental Agency (2015).(1) Urban agriculture, mainly located in peri-urban open spaces and commonly associated with the idea of the countryside, is now increasingly inserted into city life as a form of urban-rural interface (Torreggiani et al., 2012).3) Allotment gardens (also called community gardens) constitute the only opportunity to engage with activities related to gardening and cultivation for the city’s inhabitants (Da Silva et al., 2016).4) They are often established in the hope of functioning as alternatives to the current food environment, providing chances for urban residents to engage in outdoor physical and social activities, as well as beautifying the urban landscape (Egli et al., 2016).5). Moreover, they are endowed with multifunctionality, including environment sustainability (DeSilvey, 20036); Krasny & Tidball, * Graduate School of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University, Japan. **College of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University, Japan. (c) 2019 City Planning Institute of Japan http://dx.doi.org/10.14398/urpr.6.1 Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 6, 2019 | 2 20097)), the effective use of vacant urban lands (Holmer & Drescher, 2005),8) social and cultural maintenance, spaces for sightseeing, and opportunities for leisure, experience, and entertainment, hence benefiting all age groups (Milligan et al., 20049); Bowker & Tearle, 200710)) and the whole society (Partalidou & Anthopoulou, 201711); Holland, 200412)). In China, allotment gardens have great feasibility for development because they increase a farmer’s income, promote urban-rural exchange, enrich the lives of citizens, provide lower cost farming opportunities, and also provide educational and nostalgic functions (Wang & Zhang, 2008).13) Chinese scholars believe that the origin of allotment gardens is the high level of urbanization in economic development, and their essence is a combination of urban and rural culture, which they are inclined to define as follows: a form of production and management as well as rural tourism, in which peasants provide the cultivated land and help to plant and manage it, while urban citizens provide capital subscription, participate partly in cultivation, own the products that are harvested, and enjoy the pleasures of the agricultural labor process during this period (Kan et al., 2011).14) Regarding the characteristics of participants in allotment gardens, the development of eco-agriculture and community-supported allotment gardens are inseparable from the highly educated urban middle class dominated by business managers and college teachers, who have an academic qualification above a bachelor degree and an annual per capita income concentrated between 50–100 thousand yuan (Shi, et al., 201115); Shao et al., 201216)). A study about Beijing residents’ willingness to participate in allotment gardens using a logistic regression model shows that those who have a knowledge of allotment gardens and a middle- to-high income, are married and highly educated, or are retirees and workers, usually have a keen interest in participating in allotment gardens (Cai et al., 2013).17) The motivations to engage in allotment gardens have been changing over years (Armstrong, 2000),18) and presently have expanded far beyond the initial desire for food production (Da Silva et al., 2016)4) and include food security, environmental and health concerns, recreation, social cohesion, and therapeutic effects (Golden, 201319); Henryks, 201120)). The desire to grow one’s own vegetables, and the desire to experience pleasure, passion, and happiness are the motivations most often advanced by the gardeners, followed by the need to be outside and in nature, as well as the need for physical contact with soil and plants (Scheromm, 201521); Clayton, 200722)). People nowadays ever increasingly aspire to consume natural, fresh, and trustable food (Meenar & Hoover, 2012).23) As for the users’ evaluations or satisfaction with allotment gardens, the case of Seoul’s urban agriculture demonstrates that the supply of physical facilities, the increase in the time respondents are involved, and their cultivating areas positively affect their satisfaction level (Oh & Kim, 2017).24) An empirical study of allotment gardens in Taichung, Taiwan, holds that service content and operation management of allotment gardens can significantly affect participants’ overall satisfaction, as well as their willingness to recommend and their willingness to renew their membership in the garden (Cheng et al., 2005).25) However, there are some reasons that negatively affect the participation in allotment gardens, including difficulty accessing the gardens (Holland, 2004),12) theft, and vandalism (Teig et al., 2009),26) as well as the lack of time or availability to devote to the garden. The willingness to participate in allotment gardens among older age groups is limited by factors of physical and traffic conditions, so appropriate site selection before building an allotment garden should be considered, selecting suburban counties close to the city with relatively convenient transportation and providing scheduled shuttle buses in the mornings and evenings (Cai et al., 2013).17) Urban and Regional Planning Review Vol. 6, 2019 | 3 Based on the literature described above, although allotment gardens are not a new phenomenon in the world’s urban areas, especially their being used as a means of food production and self-sufficiency in times of war and economic crisis, the consciousness and practice of allotment gardens has not yet been widespread in present-day China. In addition, relevant studies on Chinese allotment gardens are neither sufficient nor profound for the reason that most Chinese studies focus on urban agriculture, not allotment gardens, and the studies on allotment gardens are concentrated on experience introduction of developed areas, while less empirical research is conducted from the perspective of users’ experience and feelings. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are to explore users’ behaviors and their evaluations of current allotment gardens in Beijing, as well as to analyze the differences in the evaluation of various allotment gardens and the impact factors of the overall evaluation, through which improvemnet measures can be made in order to promote well-planned allotment gardens alive in China’s urban areas, and meanwhile providing policy implications for Chinese governmental involvement in the issue of allotment gardens in the near future. The originality of this paper is such that, among the few studies on allotment gardens in present academia, no one has carried out research regarding the differences in the evaluation of allotment gardens at the different locations and with the diverse modes of operation in China. The authors are the first to study the differences in evaluations within this field, and combined with the flourishing development of urban agriculture, this study is very innovative and forward-looking. Regarding the methodology, this paper adopted a combination of fieldwork, questionnaires, interviews, SPSS, and GIS. The authors used 80 semi-closed questionnaires and 20 semi-structured interviews in order to collect the data from