Playground Accessibility and Neighbourhood Social Interaction Among Parents

While the positive association between social interaction and access to green space is well accepted, little research has
sought to understand the role of children’s playgrounds in facilitating social interaction within a community. Playgrounds
are spaces designed to facilitate play and the interaction of children, but may also be important places of interaction between
parents. In this paper we examine how access to playground spaces is related to social interaction between parents. We use
two measures of accessibility (1) walking distance to the closest playground and (2) playground service area, a measure of
the number of potential users of a playground based on population density. We use generalized estimating equations, an extension
of generalized linear models, to control for the confounding effects of socio-economic status (income, education), neighbourhood
dynamics (neighbourhood location, years in neighbourhood) and free time (daily outdoor activity, marital status, number of
children) on the independent relationship between social interaction and access to playground spaces. Our results suggest
that while accessibility to playgrounds is associated with social interaction among parents, the direction of the effect is
opposite to existing literature on green space and social interaction; parents with low accessibility to playgrounds are more
likely to interact socially with their neighbours than parents with high accessibility. Our results suggest a pattern of spatial
behaviour in which the burden of poor access to some resources may actually encourage greater neighbourhood engagement. Future
research studying the relationship between health and green space may benefit from studying the specific role of playground
spaces.