Green Space Perception, Physical Activity, and Mental Health Among Residents of Urban Forest Garden Residences in Guangzhou, China

Under the Healthy China 2030 strategy, green space scarcity in high-density Chinese cities has become an important public health concern. Urban forest garden residences, a vertical greening typology, may increase everyday exposure to greenery, yet their mental health associations and behavioural pathways remain unclear. Aiming to fill this gap, this cross-sectional study surveyed residents from 10 urban forest garden residential projects in Guangzhou, China, between August 2025 and January 2026, yielding 609 valid responses. Structural equation modelling and bootstrap analysis examined associations between residents’ perception of the green space within their own residential project (perceived safety, quality, accessibility) and mental health (subjective well-being, psychological distress), testing physical activity and social interaction as mediators. Better subjective green-space perception was associated with higher subjective well-being, and perceived safety and accessibility were associated with lower psychological distress. Bootstrap results supported physical activity as the more consistent mediator, whereas social interaction showed no statistically significant mediating effect in any of the single-step pathways. By shifting the empirical focus from traditional ground-level green space to vertically distributed, household-attributed greenery, this study offers novel evidence that vertical residential greenery is relevant to mental health mainly through perceived green-space conditions and physical activity, although causal interpretation is limited by the cross-sectional design. All estimates reported below are unadjusted for socio-economic covariates and for month of survey, and the cross-sectional design does not establish that altering residential green-space design would improve mental health.