A geographical detector study on factors influencing urban park use in Nanjing, China

•An urban park use index is proposed to estimate urban park use based on the Baidu heat map data.•A geographical detector is used to quantify the influencing factors and their interactive impact on urban park use.•Among all driving factors, park-surrounding facilities have the greatest influence on urban park use.•The interactive effects between each pair of driving factors are manifested as bivariate enhanced or nonlinear enhanced. Even though urban parks are widely recognized to be of immense benefits for urban residents and environment alike, developing a direct and effective method to estimate urban park use and decipher its influencing mechanisms remain to be challenging. In this study, an urban park use index is proposed to quantitatively estimate urban park use based on the Baidu heat map data in Nanjing region. Besides, a geographical detector is applied to quantify individual and interactive influences of the internal and external factors on urban park use. The evidence shows that park-surrounding facilities have the greatest influence among all driving factors. Moreover, compared with the individual influences of driving factors on urban park use, the interactive effects between each pair of driving factors are manifested as bivariate enhanced or nonlinear enhanced. These findings provide an effective means to examine and reveal the influencing mechanisms of urban park use, which can assist urban planners and policy makers to frame more specific policies aimed at successful urban park management and planning.