Objective Community parks are an important part of urban parks and green spaces, and they are also the natural spaces closest to residents in the city. As people’s demands for urban green space become more diverse, community parks undertake more and more non-material service functions. To explore the cultural ecosystem services (CES) provided by community parks at the scale of central urban area of the city, building an evaluation index system, and proposing targeted optimization strategies will help promote the construction of an ecological and natural urban living environment.

Method The research took Beijing’s central district as the research object, constructed a community park CES evaluation index system, and collected public perception evaluation data for 10 community parks in 4 categories and 8 sub-categories, a total of 19 indicators. The importance-performance analysis method (IPA analysis method) was used to construct an evaluation model, with the importance evaluation results corresponding to CES demand as the horizontal axis, the satisfaction evaluation results corresponding to CES supply as the vertical axis, and the importance and satisfaction evaluation of each type of CES. The results were divided into 4 quadrants as the average value. According to IPA analysis results of each index factor, the IPA analysis models of various CES were established to analyze the current supply and demand characteristics of CES in community parks in the central urban area of Beijing.

Result The evaluation results were analyzed from two levels: (1) at the overall level, among 19 indicators, the top three index factors of performance evaluation results were: vegetation coverage (mean value of satisfaction was 4.21), the level of natural resource maintenance (mean value of satisfaction was 4.07) , hierarchy of plants (mean value of satisfaction was 4.04). The top three index factors of importance evaluation results were: site security (mean importance value was 4.54), level of environmental hygiene maintenance (mean importance value was 4.49), the completeness of logo interpretation system (mean importance value was 4.41. (2) At the classification level, we analyzed the evaluation results of four types of CES in terms of recreation and tourism value, aesthetics and aesthetic value, cultural identity value and natural education value, and pointed out the development direction of each index factor.

Conclusion Based on CES evaluation results of 10 community parks in this study, for different types of community parks, specific optimization strategies are proposed from three aspects: adherence to environmental maintenance and site construction, enhancement of service levels and facility construction, and enhancement of theme characteristics and regional identity. It is expected to provide a reference for the optimization and improvement of CES in other similar types of community parks in the central urban area of Beijing.