What are the Benefits of Interacting with Nature?

By Lucy Keniger, Kevin J. Gaston, K. Irvine, Richard A. Fuller. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2013

1,092 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There is mounting empirical evidence that interacting with nature delivers measurable benefits to people. Reviews of this topic have generally focused on a specific type of benefit, been limited to a single discipline, or covered the benefits delivered from a particular type of interaction. Here we construct novel typologies of the settings, interactions and potential benefits of people-nature experiences, and use these to organise an assessment of the benefits of interacting with nature. We discover that evidence for the benefits of interacting with nature is geographically biased towards high latitudes and Western societies, potentially contributing to a focus on certain types of settings and benefits. Social scientists have been the most active researchers in this field. Contributions from ecologists are few in number, perhaps hindering the identification of key ecological features of the natural environment that deliver human benefits. Although many types of benefits have been studied, benefits to physical health, cognitive performance and psychological well-being have received much more attention than the social or spiritual benefits of interacting with nature, despite the potential for important consequences arising from the latter. The evidence for most benefits is correlational, and although there are several experimental studies, little as yet is known about the mechanisms that are important for delivering these benefits. For example, we do not know which characteristics of natural settings (e.g., biodiversity, level of disturbance, proximity, accessibility) are most important for triggering a beneficial interaction, and how these characteristics vary in importance among cultures, geographic regions and socio-economic groups. These are key directions for future research if we are to design landscapes that promote high quality interactions between people and nature in a rapidly urbanising world.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1dfb11cb822091529581094becbeb1e5b2b0c4a

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Citations in the corpus

Land Use Change, Spatial Interaction, and Sustainable Development in the Metropolitan Urban Areas, South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia (2020, background): “As modern society emerged, and the human population condensed into urban areas, industrialisation freed many people from reliance on direct consumptive interactions with nature [40].”
Connectedness as a Core Conservation Concern: An Interdisciplinary Review of Theory and a Call for Practice (2014, background): “Non-reliance/dependency on consumptive uses of nature [59]”
Extinction of experience: the loss of human–nature interactions (2016, background): “Regular contact with nature is also thought to be vital in ensuring proper social, emotional, cognitive, and motor development in children and youths (Keniger et al. 2013 ; Dadvand et al. 2015 ).”
Contact with blue-green spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown beneficial for mental health (2020, neutral): “Exposure to nature can come in three ways: direct contact, e.g. deliberately visiting a park for recreation; indirect contact, e.g. window views of natural spaces; and incidental contact e.g. passing through a park when commuting to work (Keniger et al., 2013).”
Nature Contact and Human Health: A Research Agenda (2017, background): “The mechanisms are only partially understood, and authors are unanimous in noting the need for deeper understanding (Dadvand et al. 2016; de Vries et al. 2013; Groenewegen et al. 2012; Hartig et al. 2014; Keniger et al. 2013; Lachowycz and Jones 2013; Shanahan et al. 2015b; Sullivan and Kaplan 2016)”
Consequences of brown bear viewing tourism : A review (2017, background): “…perhaps not 510 surprisingly, there is ample evidence that interacting with nature has direct and 511 measurable health benefits for modern humans (reviewed in Keniger et al., 2013), 512 including reconnecting to previously lost spiritual values of humanity and our 513 environment (Taylor, 2010).”
The rarity of direct experiences of nature in an urban population (2017, neutral): “Those who do not interact with nature may lose the substantial benefits associated with health and well-being (Keniger et al., 2013; Shanahan et al., 2015a).”
Informal urban green space: A trilingual systematic review of its role for biodiversity and trends in the literature (2015, neutral): “…could be related to ongoing global urbanization, the rise of urban ecology (Douglas and Goode, 2011), as well as increasing recognition of the interconnections between biodiversity and the well-being of urban residents (Dallimer et al., 2012a; Dearborn and Kark, 2010; Keniger et al., 2013).”
Perception and preference of trees: A psychological contribution to tree species selection in urban areas (2016, background): “In their recent review article, Keniger et al. (2013) provide an overview of human benefits of interacting with nature.”
Mental Health Benefits of Long-Term Exposure to Residential Green and Blue Spaces: A Systematic Review (2015, background): “For instance, it could be that the use of green spaces or the mental health benefits of green spaces are influenced by their quality and characteristics [52] or by how these spaces are perceived.”