Objective  With the continuous development of the research field of spatial quality and the introduction of new technology and new data, the connotation of park quality has been expanded accordingly. However, there is still a lack of systematic and extensive conceptual framework of park quality, which to some extent makes it more difficult to understand the concept of park quality, and thus limits the development of relevant research in both theoretical and empirical aspects. Moreover, the concept connotation of park quality shows increasingly complex characteristics, which also indicates that the multi-dimensional improvement of quality and the exploration of the law of interaction between human and environment will become the key research direction of parks in the future. Therefore, it is urgent to clarify and reconstruct the concept connotation of park quality from the above two aspects.

Methods Experience is the inevitable path of park quality evaluation. A detailed analysis of the concept connotation of park quality from the perspective of experience process will help understand the specific process of subject-object interaction and the influence thereof on the evaluation of park quality. Based on the experience concept in phenomenology and the theory of interaction process between human and environment in environmental psychology, this research breaks down the process of park quality evaluation into three stages: sensation, perception and cognition. Moreover, the research retrieves relevant literature in Web of Science and CNKI through such English keywords as “park quality”, “urban green space quality”, “aesthetic quality”, “landscape visual quality”, “the quality of green open space”, “landscape preference”, “performed dimension”, as well as corresponding Chinese keywords, with 48 most representative Chinese and English literature being finally selected, Based on this, the research conducts a literature review to extract the conceptual framework of park quality based on experience process.

Results From the four dimensions of environmental characteristic elements, reorganization of environmental characteristic elements, environmental affordance and subjectively perceived sense of place, this research clusters subjective and objective indicators in different stages of experience on one hand, and reflects the comprehensive process of subjective and objective action on the other hand, which is a more refined classification method. This classification method can reflect people’s sense of participation and initiative in building park quality. Specifically, in the sensation stage, the connotations of park quality mainly fall into the category of environmental characteristic elements such as spatial green quantity and plant category; in the perception stage, the connotations of park quality mainly fall into the category of reorganization of environmental characteristics such as naturalness, complexity and environmental coherence; in the cognition stage, the connotations of park quality mainly fall into the category of sense of place such as security, mystery and legibility.

Conclusion In addition, in combination with the practical needs of park transformation in urban micro-renewal under the humanistic planning trend, this research proposes and explains in detail the potential application path of the conceptual framework of park quality: fine measurement of park quality and formulation of micro-renewal strategy for park environment. Firstly, in terms of the fine measurement of park quality, this research summarizes corresponding connotations and common data forms of park quality in the three stages of sensation, perception and cognition, and the basic methods for data usage in each stage. The refinement and application of the aforesaid framework can help resolve the problem of confusion in measurement methods and data usage methods caused by the unclear concept of park quality, while taking into account both the systematicity and accuracy of evaluation, so as to facilitate the evaluation of park quality at different experience stages. Secondly, based on the specific situation, this research elaborates on the micro-renewal strategy for parks from the following several aspects: improvement of environmental characteristic elements, optimization of the organization of environmental characteristic elements, affordance of environment, and inheritance of historical culture and market vitality. Finally, the research points out that there is still potential for further development and improvement of park quality connotation in experience stages of the conceptual framework. This research sorts out several common conceptual frameworks of park quality with corresponding measurement methods, and finally builds a conceptual framework based on experience process. However, this conceptual framework is still not perfect enough, and entails further expansion, improvement and enrichment with the continuous emergence of new technologies and new data.