Nature contact, nature connectedness and associations with health, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours

By Leanne Martin, M. White, A. Hunt, Miles Richardson, Sabine Pahl, Jim Burt. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2020

730 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Contact with, and psychological connectedness to the natural world are both associated with various health and sustainability-related outcomes. To date, though, the evidence base has been fragmented. Using a representative sample of the adult population of England (N = 4,960), we investigated the relationships between three types of nature contact, psychological connectedness, health, subjective wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours within a single study. We found that specific types of nature contact, as well as individual differences in nature connectedness, were differentially associated with aspects of health, well-being and pro-environmental behaviours. Living in a greener neighbourhood was, unrelated to any wellbeing or sustainability outcomes. By contrast, visiting nature ≥ once a week was positively associated with general health and household pro-environmental behaviours. Moreover, people who watched/listened to nature documentaries reported higher levels of both pro-environmental behaviours. Nature connectedness was positively related to eudaimonic wellbeing and both types of pro-environmental behaviour. Moreover, connectedness moderated key relationships between nature contact, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours. The complexity of our findings suggests that interventions increasing both contact with, and connection to nature, are likely to be needed in order to achieve synergistic improvements to human and planetary health.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/45355662f400f8d5847eb13f563a122ee09f1855

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. A. Hunt
2. Miles Richardson
3. R. Lumber
4. R. Young
5. B. Moorhouse
6. S. Clayton
7. Holli-Anne Passmore
8. J. Dobson

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

1. A. Hunt
2. Miles Richardson
3. R. Lumber
4. R. Young
5. B. Moorhouse
6. S. Clayton
7. Holli-Anne Passmore
8. J. Dobson

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Miles Richardson
2. A. Hunt
3. S. Clayton
4. Holli-Anne Passmore
5. P. Pihkala
6. Pihkala Panu

Citations in the corpus

• Climate anxiety: Psychological responses to climate change. (2020, background): “Both of these activities can serve to increase a sense of connection to nature, which has been associated with greater subjective wellbeing among both adults (Martin et al., 2020) and children (Barrera-Hernández, Sotelo-Castillo, EcheverríaCastro, & Tapia-Fonllem, 2020).”
• Moments, not minutes: The nature-wellbeing relationship (2021, background): “Overall, while time in nature is important for physical health (Martin et al., 2020), our findings highlight that time spent in nature is not necessarily a significant predictor of human wellbeing and mental health.”
• Applying the pathways to nature connectedness at a societal scale: a leverage points perspective (2020, background): “This differential between nature exposure and nature connectedness has been recently confirmed by a population survey in the UK which showed that nature visits are independent from nature connectedness (Martin et al. 2020), with connectedness rather than visits also related to pro-nature conservatio”