Functional needs and residents' motivation towards visiting a neighbourhood park

Despite neighbourhood parks meet residents' social needs, provide visual enjoyment, and create passive and active recreational opportunities, most of them are underutilised. To understand this issue, research focused on the social and physical aspects of parks using mainly quantitative methods. Few explored the psychological aspect in terms of motivation and dependence. Hence, this qualitative research aims to provide a more in-depth understanding of resident's functional needs that foster their dependence towards neighbourhood parks. The study involved purposively 29 park users living in the neighbourhood of Precinct 9, Putrajaya, Malaysia. In-depth semi-structured interviews were used then verbatim transcribed. Based on the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, results revealed that the contextual dimensions and the incentives for park utilisation constitute the major themes, where gathering outdoors, physical activity, emotional, functional, and environmental motivation variables are the sub-themes. The practical and theoretical implications are outlined regarding park users' expectations and experiences for enhanced park utilisation