Rethinking urban ecosystem service flow through human mobility: The neighborhood effect averaging problem

Daily exposure to ecosystem services (ES) plays an important role in improving urban residents' health; however, residents' actual contact with ES, referred to as ecosystem service flows, depends not only on local biophysical conditions of urban nature but also on human daily mobility patterns. Using Shanghai as a case study, this research integrated large-scale mobile phone signaling data with high-resolution ES datasets to compare residential-based ES flows and mobility-based ES flows for three health-related ES: air purification, urban cooling, and park recreation. We found that: (1) When human mobility is considered, residents' contact with ES tends to converge toward the average level of ES flows in the study area, a phenomenon known as the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP); (2) Low-income residents, who travel longer distances and spend more time away from home, exhibit a stronger NEAP effect than high-income residents; (3) Scenario simulations indicate that NEAP arises from the interaction between spatial heterogeneity in ES supply and human mobility, with lower spatial variability weakening NEAP and longer travel distances amplifying it. These findings highlight the necessity of incorporating human mobility into urban ES flow assessments, with important implications for equitable urban planning and environmental justice.