Feeling connected to nature has been shown to be beneficial to wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviour. General nature contact and knowledge based activities are often used in an attempt to engage people with nature. However the specific routes to nature connectedness have not been examined systematically. Two online surveys (total n = 321) of engagement with, and value of, nature activities structured around the nine values of the Biophila Hypothesis were conducted. Contact, emotion, meaning, and compassion, with the latter mediated by engagement with natural beauty, were predictors of connection with nature, yet knowledge based activities were not. In a third study (n = 72), a walking intervention with activities operationalising the identified predictors, was found to significantly increase connection to nature when compared to walking in nature alone or walking in and engaging with the built environment. The findings indicate that contact, emotion, meaning, compassion, and beauty are pathways for improving nature connectedness. The pathways also provide alternative values and frames to the traditional knowledge and identification routes often used by organisations when engaging the public with nature.
Nature connectedness relates to an individual's subjective sense of their relationship with the natural world. A recent meta-analysis has found that people who are more connected to nature also tend to have higher levels of self-reported hedonic well-being; however, no reviews have focussed on nature connection and eudaimonic well-being. This meta-analysis was undertaken to explore the relationship of nature connection with eudaimonic wellbeing and to test the hypothesis that this relationship is stronger than that of nature connection and hedonic well-being. From 20 samples (n = 4758), a small significant effect size was found for the relationship of nature connection and eudaimonic well-being (r = 0.24); there was no significant difference between this and the effect size (from 30 samples n = 11,638) for hedonic well-being (r = 0.20). Of the eudaimonic well-being subscales, personal growth had a moderate effect size which was significantly larger than the effect sizes for autonomy, purpose in life/meaning, self-acceptance, positive relations with others and environmental mastery, but not vitality. Thus, individuals who are more connected to nature tend to have greater eudaimonic well-being, and in particular have higher levels of self-reported personal growth.
This study exemplifies how complex behaviors can be controlled by a single locus through multiple isoforms regulating both developmental and physiological pathways in different neuronal substrates.
Objective: Previous research on nutrition labelling has mainly used subjective measures. This study examines the effectiveness of two types of nutrition label using two objective measures: eye movements and healthiness ratings. Design: Eye movements were recorded while participants made healthiness ratings for two types of nutrition label: standard and standard plus the Food Standards Agency's 'traffic light' concept. Setting: University of Derby, UK. Subjects: A total of 92 participants (mean age 31.5 years) were paid for their participation. None of the participants worked in the areas of food or nutrition. Results: For the standard nutrition label, participant eye movements lacked focus and their healthiness ratings lacked accuracy. The traffic light system helped to guide the attention of the consumer to the important nutrients and improved the accuracy of the healthiness ratings of nutrition labels. Conclusions: Consumers have a lack of knowledge regarding how to interpret nutrition information for standard labels. The traffic light concept helps to ameliorate this problem by indicating important nutrients to which to pay attention. Keywords Nutrition Nutrition labels Eye movements Traffic lightsIt is widely accepted that current eating habits in general tend to be less than healthy 1 . For example, the financial burden on the National Health Service of food-related ill health is more than double that related to smoking 2 . One reason for this is the increase in consumption of prepackaged foods and a subsequent reduction in consumers who cook food every day 3 . A change in people's dietary approach is therefore crucial in order to provide a healthier diet 4 . One area where consumers can be informed of dietary information is in the labelling of nutrition on foods, so that consumers can make an informed choice regarding what they eat.However, Black and Rayner's 5 influential study of nutrition labels found that people often do not use nutrition information, or just use one item on the nutrition label (usually fat) to guide judgements on the healthiness of a foodstuff. Furthermore, people found nutrition information difficult to comprehend and use. For example, consumers found it difficult to determine whether a specified amount of a nutrient was a low, medium or high amount.More recently, Higginson et al. 6 examined verbal protocols when consumers made their normal weekly shop and when purchasing the healthiest version of nine items listed by the researchers. Nutrition labels were only examined on 4.2 and 33.0% of occasions for the weekly and healthiest version shops, respectively. For both types of shopping, the two main nutrients examined were fat and energy.It is clear that there are problems with the current nutrition label. Firstly, consumers find it difficult to understand the information presented. Secondly, there is a lack of understanding as to what nutrients are important to examine, with consumers mainly attending to only fat and energy. In fact, it has been known for some time that the in...
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