Green spaces benefit people and the environment in many ways but not all voters see it that way
Sharon Zou says funding public green spaces are a challenge (Photo provided)
Public green spaces—parks, forests and conservation areas—increase potential for varied recreational opportunities, improved mental and physical health and better environmental sustainability. However, funding these spaces remains a challenge.
Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism faculty members Sharon Zou and Nick Pitas are studying how communities value and pay for green spaces. Their research, initially focused on a case study of greenspace ballot initiatives (GBI) in Champaign and Cook counties, has expanded to examine voter behavior, funding mechanisms and the role misinformation and disinformation can play in these initiatives.
Zou said green spaces benefit people and the environment in many ways.
“The role of nature in human health—not just physical but also mental health,—has proved to be very important,” Zou said. “Public green space is also a place where the community gets together, so it’s also about social cohesion and community well-being. If we go more broadly, green space is important for conservation in general, to make sure nature is being protected.”
The catch: Public parks and recreational areas can be expensive for taxpayers, requiring routine maintenance, infrastructure improvements and expansion efforts. While some funding comes from government budgets, many communities turn to ballot initiatives—voter-approved measures that allocate more funds for conservation and park services.
However, not all voters see funding these spaces as worthwhile. Pitas said there’s a variety of reasons why voters might be against it.
“They could be opposed because they don’t think that the agency that receives the money is going to be doing a good job,” Pitas said. “They could be opposed because they don’t see the value in paying into common resources that benefit everybody but don’t benefit them as an individual. They may be ideologically opposed to the idea of paying taxes in general.”
Campaigns against green space initiatives often benefit groups with financial or political objectives. Real estate developers, for example, may oppose conservation efforts limiting new construction opportunities. Political organizations pushing for lower taxes may frame GBI as promoting excessive government spending, even when the long-term benefits outweigh the costs.
“One of the unfortunate things about elections in the last, you know, couple decades is that false information has become a much more important factor in determining the outcome of those elections,” Pitas said. “Everybody has a global microphone in the form of a social media account now.”
Organized groups can use disinformation—the deliberate spreading of false information—against voters, or frame information in a way that opposes GBI. For example, a group might make a claim that property taxes will increase more than they actually will, or that a park district owns more land than it actually does. Pitas and Zou are designing an experiment to test the impact of false information on people’s voter behavior.
“We have two types of inoculation,” Zou said. “One is more general—it’ll say, ‘Hey, be aware that there will be groups that are opposing these referendum initiatives, and they might spread disinformation.’ We also want to compare that with a more detailed inoculation and lay the facts about the referendum, about the public land status, and about how the natural resources management agencies are managing the land.”
By exposing voters to potential disinformation before it reaches them and consequentially debunking the falsehoods, Pitas and Zou hope their research provides them with the accurate information to make informed decisions.
One of the unfortunate things about elections in the last, you know, couple decades is that false information has become a much more important factor in determining the outcome of those elections.
Nick Pitas
RST Assistant Professor
“I always love translating my research into helpful and meaningful practices and creating an impact in the community,” Zou said.
Pitas and Zou also hope that their research can combat misinformation—the unintentional spread of false information. Pitas cited a recent successful example of this: a proposal for increased property taxes to fund maintenance and improvements on preservation properties.
In 2020, the Champaign County Forest Preserve District successfully increased property taxes to fund maintenance and improvements for existing properties. This was a turnaround from 2008 when a similar tax proposal failed, partly due to opposition from the Champaign County Farm Bureau.
Pitas said that in 2008, the Farm Bureau was concerned that the new funding would be used to purchase agricultural land for conservation, reducing farmland availability. But in 2020, the Forest Preserve District proactively engaged with the Farm Bureau and assured them that no agricultural land would be acquired or converted.
With this clarification, the Farm Bureau vocally and publicly supported the 2020 measure due to proactive outreach on the part of campaign volunteers, which was pivotal to the success of that ballot initiative. Campaign volunteers also solicited support from a variety of community organizations, such as Rotary clubs throughout Champaign County.
Pitas and Zou are looking to connect with any agencies who have experience with or are interested in GBI. The overarching goal is to better understand other case studies, the issues related to voter behavior, mis/disinformation and how these individual pieces fit together as a larger picture.
At the end of the day, green space benefits everybody, Pitas said.
“For you, and for me and for your people that live in the community; it benefits plants and animals that depend on that space, it protects groundwater, it protects the quality of the air that we breathe and it protects places that are rare and might not exist anywhere else,” Pitas said. “There are benefits for everybody.”
RST faculty members design and lead innovative educational practicums that immerse students in experiential learning environments
Renata Endres, right, teaches RST 185: Get Your Kicks on Route 66 (Photo provided)
By JONATHAN KING
Renata Endres is taking her belief in an applied teaching approach on the road—on Route 66, to be precise.
“I believe the most effective way to bridge the gap between the classroom and industry application is to experience concepts firsthand outside the classroom,” said Endres, teaching assistant professor of Recreation, Sport and Tourism who teaches RST 185: Get Your Kicks on Route 66.
That is why Endres and fellow RST faculty members design and lead innovative educational practicums that immerse students in experiential learning environments.
These courses have become very popular among students, but RST faculty continue to pioneer new trails out of the classroom to foster rich educational experiences.
One example is Endres’ new Route 66 course, co-designed with Mike Raycraft, an RST clinical associate professor. In this course, students visit sites along the historic Route 66 corridor to deepen their understanding of heritage tourism; agritourism; and recreation, sport and tourism management.
“Whether pursuing careers in these fields or something entirely different, the range of firsthand experience illustrates how the development of technical skills we learn in the classroom must be coupled with soft skills to achieve professional success,” Endres said.
“My most memorable part of the Route 66 experience was being able to travel along the mother road with friends, classmates, co-workers and some of my favorite professors in RST,” said Riley Joyce, a student in Endres’ course. “It was really beneficial to see how Route 66 has impacted both Illinois and St. Louis over the years in both tourism and agrotourism worlds.”
Assistant Professor Sharon Zou is another RST faculty member whose educational innovations are bridging the gap between the classroom and the real world. Zou co-teaches an innovative community-based learning course, Place Making and Rural Tourism in China, in tandem with Wei (Windy) Zhao from the School of Architecture and Molly Briggs from the School of Art and Design. The course is supported by the university’s Transdisciplinary Global South Community-Based Learning Program Development Grant to facilitate interdisciplinary global service learning for Illinois students.
For this new interdisciplinary course, Zou and RST students joined architecture students and art and design students for a learning opportunity in rural China. In February 2025, students and faculty traveled to Xihu Village in Jiangxi Province, China, to co-design a locally rooted, sustainable tourism development plan for the people of Xihu who wanted support to strategically plan and develop a place-making and tourism initiative.
For the course, students benefited from immersion in local culture. They visited an ancestral celebration during Lunar New Year, took a scenic hike on the historical Hui Merchant Route for tea trading, toured a tea factory, visited the historical village of Chengkan, listened to a talk by an architect specialized in rural tourism development, met with a village head and representative from local rural revitalization company and took a tour to see the company’s current efforts in tourism infrastructure development.
To develop their tourism model, students met with community stakeholders to conduct asset mapping and a market analysis of the community. They asked questions such as: What do you want for your village? What are the local sources of historical and cultural pride? How can we help you preserve your cultural pride while developing a sustainable tourism plan? What infrastructure is there to support tourists? What form of economic distribution will benefit community well-being?
That feedback will help students co-design a sustainable tourism development plan for the village. RST students gained knowledge of how rural communities can leverage tourism to achieve economic, socio-cultural and environmental sustainability. Students worked directly with local stakeholders and gained valuable skills in asset mapping, competitor analysis, market analysis, community visioning, tourist experience development and destination branding.
Additionally, architecture students worked on design proposals that challenged common “revitalization” methods, and art and design students developed wayfinding plans and memory-making designs to include cultural, historical and phenomenological village features.
“We wanted to understand the desires of the community to help them design a sustainable tourism model that showcases the cultural pride and natural beauty of their village while also contributing to the community’s well-being,” Zou said. This project emphasizes an equitable partnership to provide firsthand, practical, interdisciplinary education for Illinois students and simultaneously facilitate a locally rooted vision that will preserve and share the village’s heritage.
“Our RST out-of-the-classroom experience is different from your typical study abroad program,” Zou said. “We’re going to put you to work, and ideally, it will be a transformative experience that students can leverage for their professional careers and social competencies.”
Sharon Zou, right, and RST students joined architecture students and art and design students for a learning opportunity in rural China (Photo provided)
When Zou isn’t teaching hands-on learning in rural China, she also works with Richard Proffer from Illinois Extension and RST students to develop a sustainable tourism plan for Elmwood, Illinois, a town that is known for being the artistic origin of the famous Illinois alma mater sculpture. Beyond these two tourism practicums, Zou studies recreation and tourism consumer insights to inform sustainable funding models for public land and parks in the U.S., with a particular focus on national parks such as Indiana Dunes National Park and the greater Yellowstone ecosystem which includes private, state and federal lands.
RST experiential learning trips go beyond academics: they teach students independence, adaptability, resilience, confidence and cultural awareness. While navigating a new environment, students will learn to coexist with diverse groups, develop strong communication skills and gain invaluable social and intercultural competencies.
“Prospective students should join one of these experiential courses to gain practical, hands-on knowledge and build valuable industry connections,” Endres said. “Networking with experts in the field provides a competitive edge in their career development. And socially, these classes provide students an opportunity for a shared bonding experience that can’t be duplicated in the classroom.”
Rural and nature-based tourism is one of the fastest-growing segments in the tourism industry, and the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism wants to be at the forefront of efforts to develop it further.
Eagle Days in Havana, Ill., are days when visitors flock to see the majestic birds.
Rural and nature-based tourism is one of the fastest-growing segments in the tourism industry, and the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism in the College of Applied Health Sciences at Illinois wants to be at the forefront of helping develop it.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimated the U.S. outdoor recreation economy accounted for $374 billion of gross domestic product in 2020. A survey of tourists from eight Midwest states—including Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee and Wisconsin—revealed that Illinois was their No. 1 destination.
The I-Rural project, funded by Illinois Extension and the University of Illinois’ Office of the Provost Investment for Growth Program, was launched in 2022 to develop a model that will guide rural tourism development across the state. Illinois Extension and RST have partnered to help rural communities create strategies for capturing a piece of the fast-growing tourism industry. The river-based communities of Grafton, Havana, Savanna and Galena are piloting the project.
In the project’s first phase, interactive workshops were held with local leaders and business owners at the four pilot sites, followed by stakeholder interviews in Phase 2 and the development of a survey to understand rural tourist motivations and preferences in Phase 3.
RST Assistant Professors Joelle Soulard and Sharon Zou said that “throughout the project, we made multiple visits to communities. During these visits, we met and connected with local government staff, business owners, public land managers, nonprofit staff and residents.”
Executive reports and webinars were held to share the findings and access to the I-Rural Toolkit, which showcased strategies to develop rural tourism and grant-funding opportunities.
Building new relationships between RST faculty and Extension staff was critical to the project. The relationships Extension built in the communities enhanced the ability of RST researchers to gather data. This year, I-Rural is seeing RST research converted into relevant, actionable plans in rural communities throughout Illinois, Soulard and Zou said.
“We presented our project to Illinois Extension’s Local Government Education webinar series,” the RST faculty members said. “More than 65 local officials and community leaders attended. Student engagement was an important part of the project. We had undergraduate and graduate students who participated in all aspects of research. We published a series of articles in tourism management journals based on this research, and the citation index for these articles is rapidly growing, showing how Illinois is a leader in advancing the literature in this area.”
Jennifer Russell, the University of Illinois Extension Community & Economic Development educator working in the region, said that local leaders are attending events to learn about regional tourism and growth in the industry, and communities are applying for Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development grants to upgrade local resources such as a community pool, downtown riverfronts and docks.
“Communities are exploring opportunities to host new tourists because of an increase in cruise ships docking nearby,” Russell said, “while also marketing local assets like wildlife viewing, hiking, camping, orchards, mushroom hunting, road trips, zipline, ski-lift, alpine coaster, specialty markets and more.”
Grafton is continuing to work on tourism-related projects, she said. Aerie’s Resort recently opened an alpine coaster, and the mayor’s office is heading up a Veteran-themed art installation and a ferry study to improve transportation infrastructure for residents and Missouri tourists crossing the Mississippi River.
Richard Proffer, Illinois Extension community and economic development educator for Mason County, said that there was “a lot of excitement” on the part of businesses and residents invested in their community in Havana who didn’t know how to implement tourism strategies.
After reviewing studies of visitors, a group was formed to activate programs. Natural tourism is a draw for Havana and the county, with visitors from Chicagoland coming for stargazing and 2,000 attendees at the Eagle Days festivals in February, considered an optimal time for people to see the majestic birds. Bed and breakfast bookings increased in the area, and survey responses from tourists prompted the establishment of a restaurant serving breakfast, Proffer said.
Zou and Soulard said they are in the final stage and wrapping up the project, but stressed that much work remains to be done.
“We are trying to visit the communities to share our findings that are relevant and helpful for their tourism development,” the researchers said. “We will present the project to the National Extension Tourism conference in Milwaukee, and we are hoping to connect with extension [groups] from across the country and seek ways to expand the project to a regional one. We would also like to dive into agritourism sector, and we are currently collaborating with folks at the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.”
In the final year of her doctoral studies, Zou took a class that connected marketing and the financing of park, recreation, and tourism services
Sharon Zou
Growing up in Guangzhou, China, Suiwen “Sharon” Zou quickly learned the importance of marketing a business.
Zou’s parents are entrepreneurs and they run their own factories.
“My parents, they are very savvy business people,” said Zou, an assistant professor in the Dept. of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois. “Growing up, I was educated by my parents that financial resources are an important means, if not the most important means, to an end. That got me very interested in business, in different business principles. So I always have that in mind.”
When Zou left China for the United States to pursue a graduate degree, she was focused on business. When she chose Texas A&M—in part to be near the person who became her husband—she gravitated toward an interest in marketing because of her advisor, whose research involved marketing.
“I was taking multiple classes, and specifically two classes that really got me to shape my research agenda. One was a class with the marketing department,” she said, “and the class discussed influential papers in psychology and behavioral economics. That started to plant the seeds.”
In the final year of her doctoral studies, she took a class that connected marketing and the financing of park, recreation, and tourism services. That’s when everything clicked for Zou, and she was hooked. Zou completed her Ph.D. at Texas A&M and then, with her husband urging her on, she applied for the job in the College of Applied Health Sciences at Illinois.
“I was not confident I would be able to get tenure here,” she said. “But my husband told me I have the support. So when I came (to Illinois for the job interview), there was this celebrity crush, you know? And then (RST Professor) Monika Stodolska picked me up from the airport. I could not believe it, because I was citing her work. I could not believe I was meeting people that I cited in my research!”
Now, she said, “I study how people have fun.”
Precisely, the overarching goal of Zou’s research is to improve tourism/leisure experience and community well-being by examining consumer’s perceptions and devising innovative marketing practices.
A recent study involved fee-based pricing at the Indiana Dunes National Park.
Zou said it was vital for public parks and other tourism industries to build a sustainable revenue model and not to solely rely on decreasing funding from state and federal sources.
The primary purpose of Zou’s study was to “understand visitors’ and surrounding community residents’ perceptions of Indiana Dunes National Park user fees to inform a fee structure that balances revenue generation and equitable access.”
During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Zou said, “parks saw explosions of people visiting.” While that was great for parks in terms of revenue, it also led to increasing operation costs at a time when government funding for these sites is being reduced.
“The specific goal is to find out how visitors see the park fees, and are they fair?,” Zou said.
The RST researcher said her preliminary findings indicate there was no consensus from study participants on what “fair” means, and that tension between fairness principles partly explains the longstanding controversy and debate on public land user fees.
Zou said tourism industries need to diversify their revenue streams because of declining funding from state and federal agencies.
“It’s like an investment,” she said. “You need to diversify in order to have that sustainability. You need to be more entrepreneurial with your funding sources. As for pricing user fees, how we can design a fee structure based on visitors’ diverse levels of perceptions and willingness-to-pay so that it is more acceptable to the visitors and we’ll get more revenue for the underfunded park services.”
Zou is also working with four local, rural communities—Galena, Savanna, Havana, and Grafton—to build up their tourism industries. Those communities have small populations—in the hundreds—but on the weekends, it grows ten-fold, in some cases.
“The goal of that project is to create a toolkit for a rural community that is underresourced to help to guide their tourism development initiatives,” she said. “We are close to finishing the toolkits.”
One thing is clear from speaking with Zou: she loves her work and her workplace.
“(RST Dept. Head) Carla Santos told me, ‘This is a huge playground. You will have a ton of support to do the research, and you will have a lot of playmates that will play with different toys. And it will be a great place to work.’ And it turns out to be really, really true.”’
Pilot grants reignite Chad Symposium, fostering research collaboration and innovation
KCH Associate Professor Naiman Khan’s presentation was titled “Role of Omega-3 Lipid Metabolites in Obesity and Cognitive Function” (Photo by Lisa Bralts)
The first Center for Health, Aging, and Disability (CHAD) symposium since 2017 was a celebration of the research accomplished with the help of the Pilot Grant Program.
Three researchers from the College of Applied Health Sciences—Naiman Khan, an associate professor in Kinesiology and Community Health; Brian Monson, an assistant professor in Speech and Hearing Science, and Sharon Zou, an assistant professor in Recreation, Sport and Tourism, made a point of thanking CHAD’s grants for helping launch their studies.
Khan, whose presentation was titled “Role of Omega-3 Lipid Metabolites in Obesity and Cognitive Function,” said CHAD’s funding was vital to his work.
“CHAD was really helpful in us starting a new line of engagement of research,” he said.
CHAD director Jeff Woods, AHS’ associate dean for research, said to date, 38 pilot grants have been awarded since CHAD was launched in 2010, with $860,000 awarded to AHS researchers for pilot research. Woods described CHAD’s role as “work at the bookends of medicine … with the goal of improving people’s lives.”
“CHAD pilot grants are really important for junior faculty,” Zou said.
And the payoff has been well worth it, Woods said, citing the return on investment as approximately $16 in external funding to $1 in CHAD funding.
Zou’s presentation was titled “Exploring an Efficient and Equitable Entrance Fee for Public Lands: A Community-based investigation in the Indiana Dunes National Park.”
“I study how people have fun,” Zou said, explaining that it was vital for public parks and other tourism industries to build a sustainable revenue model and not to rely on decreasing funding from state and federal sources.
The primary purpose of Zou’s study was to “understand visitors’ and surrounding community residents’ perceptions of Indiana Dunes National Park user fees to inform a fee structure that balances revenue generation and equitable access.”
During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Zou said, “parks saw explosions of people visiting.” While that was great for parks in terms of revenue, it also led to increasing operation costs at a time when government funding for these sites is being reduced.
“The specific goal is to find out how visitors see the park fees, and are they fair?,” Zou said.
The RST researcher said her preliminary findings indicate there was no consensus from study participants on what “fair” means, and that tension between fairness principles partly explains the longstanding controversy and debate on public land user fees.
Khan’s presentation focused on how poor lifestyle choices can predict an early onset of dementia, noting that obesity worldwide has increased threefold since the 1980s. The KCH researcher said his research, in conjunction with Aditi Das of Georgia Tech, suggested that the a deficiencyin the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)—which has been reported to have beneficial effects on obesity, diabetes mellitus, and serum lipids in animals—was associated with individuals with a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher, which is classified as obese.
“BMI is inversely connected to cognitive function,” Khan said. “Only in obese individuals do we see DHEA increase in circulation.” Khan said his preliminary results found:
Circulating Omega-3 metabolites were higher among persons with higher weight status and the levels were associated with degree of fat mass
Circulating metabolites inversely associated with cognitive function
Only observed among persons with overweight and obesity
Selectively associated with hippocampal function
Implications for memory function
Khan said his overarching goal was to “develop effective lifestyle approaches to improve cognitive function.”
SHS’ Monson discussed his study called “Capturing Prenatal Auditory Experience.”
“If there was a pregnant woman in this audience, that baby would be hearing my voice, and perhaps making judgments,” he said, drawing laughter from the gathering. “How do we know? Because full-term newborns come to the world with memories of what they’ve heard, including the mother’s voice.”
In utero, Monson explained, was a unique acoustic environment. When preterm infants are delivered, they are placed into incubators, which rapidly changed the sound profile, he said. The consequences of those changes include increased risk for sensorineural hearing loss, auditory neuropathy, language and speech developmental delays, auditory attention deficits and auditory processing disorder.
Monson’s study involved a group of pregnant women wearing a LENA listening device twice a week during the third trimester, while the device was placed into cribs of very preterm infants at Carle Foundation Hospital three times a week through their stay in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
“Fetuses are getting 2.5 hours a day of speech exposure vs. 32 minutes a day for very preterm infants,” he said. “It’s an alarming difference to me.” NICU infants may incur a deficit of about 150 hours of speech exposure over the course of the preterm period, he explained.
One of the possible mitigation strategies for very preterm infants could be to provide meaningful targets (about three hours a day of speech exposure) to optimize auditory exposures in NICU settings.
“The maternal heartbeat is never turned off in utero,” he said. “The maternal heartbeat is never turned on in NICU.”
Following the CHAD Pilot Grant success stories, Wendy Rogers, the Shahid and Ann Carlson Khan Professor of Applied Health Sciences, talked about the work of Collaborations in Health, Aging, Research, & Technology (CHART).
CHART’s mission is to enable successful aging through:
Fundamental research
Advanced technology development
Education of researchers, developers, healthcare professionals, older adults
Guidance for policy decision-making
Translation of these efforts to positively affect the lives of older adults
CHART was the first research theme of the College of Applied Health Sciences and boasts the development of the McKechnie Family LIFE Home, an interdisciplinary research facility and simulated home environment that helps promote community engagement, industry partnerships, healthcare collaborations and faculty innovation.
Also part of the symposium was the introduction of a new AHS research theme called CARD (Collaborations in the Advancement of Research on Disability), led by KCH Associate Professor Laura Rice and KCH Professor John Kosciulek. CARD is focused on enhancing the health and quality of life of people with disabilities—through research that addresses critical gaps in disability-related knowledge and outreach that engages individuals with disabilities.
CARD’s short-term goals include:
Develop a collaborative working group
Develop communication strategies
Establish a steering committee of stakeholders
Develop and implement outreach and engagement events
Longer-term goals include:
Host a bi-annual research symposium
Develop a “toolkit” for UIUC faculty to support the performance of disability-related research in the Champaign-Urbana area
Respond to disability-related funding opportunities
Establish a competitive program to provide supplemental funding to support ongoing disability research among junior faculty
Host a seminar series with external experts
Establish a research training program for students registered with DRES interested in doing research
Support the development of new research registries and/or expansion of current registries
The first CARD meeting is set for March 22.
In kicking off the symposium, AHS Dean Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell said CHAD was “one of the biggest attractions” of her decision to come to Illinois and lead the college.
“When I thought about CHAD, I thought it’d be interesting to lead a college that has this kind of momentum to it, and I’ve been proven correct, year after year,” she said. “CHAD provides students with real-world engagement, and plays an absolutely critical role in their professional development.”
Woods agreed.
“We’re helping put the next generation of scientists into the field.”
