Linking park environmental characteristics to child health outcomes: towards an evidence-based child-friendly design framework

With the deepening of the Child-Friendly City concept in global urban governance, understanding how park environments systematically promote children’s physical and mental health has become a critical issue in both research and practice. Taking the urban park system of Dazhou City, Sichuan Province, China, as an empirical case, this study constructed a comprehensive evaluation framework encompassing six dimensions—safety, accessibility, comfort, playability, naturalness, and inclusiveness—to examine the relationships between environmental characteristics and children’s health outcomes. The results indicate that 14 environmental indicators significantly affect children’s physical health ( β = 0.105–0.227), primarily through pathways related to risk reduction and physical activity promotion, among which noise control, facility diversity, and barrier-free design show the most prominent effects; In contrast, 9 indicators significantly enhance children’s mental health ( β = 0.139–0.380), mainly via mechanisms associated with cognitive restoration and emotional regulation, with interactive engagement, wildlife habitat, and seasonal landscape exerting the greatest influence. These findings reveal a differentiated mechanism in which physical health is driven by stress mitigation and activity support, whereas mental health relies more on restorative experiences and human–nature interactions. Based on these empirical findings, this study further proposes cultural integration, and micro-environmental renovation as optimization strategies, providing practical and operable guidance for developing child-friendly parks in high-density urban contexts.