30 Days Wild and the Relationships Between Engagement With Nature’s Beauty, Nature Connectedness and Well-Being

Abstract

Recent research suggests that engagement with natural beauty (EWNB) is key to the well-being benefits of nature connectedness. The Wildlife Trust’s 30 Days Wild campaign provides a large-scale intervention for improving public engagement with nature and its beauty. The effect of 30 Days Wild participation on levels of EWNB and the relationship between EWNB, nature connectedness and happiness was evaluated during the 2017 campaign. Of the 49,000 people who signed up to the campaign, 308 people fully completed measures of EWNB, nature connection, health, happiness, and conservation behaviors at baseline, post-30 days and post-2 months. There were sustained and significant increases for scores in nature connection, health, happiness, and conservation behaviors. In addition, 30 Days Wild was the first intervention found to increase EWNB. Further, the significant increase in EWNB mediated the relationship between the increases in nature connectedness and happiness. In a supplementary study to understand the well-being benefits further (n = 153), emotional regulation was found to mediate the relationship between nature connectedness and happiness, but EWNB and emotional regulation were not related. The links between nature’s beauty, nature connectedness and well-being are discussed within an account of affect-regulation.

A Measure of Nature Connectedness for Children and Adults: Validation, Performance, and Insights

“…As an affect-based approach was taken to the development of the NCI this would be expected and indicates utility as a measure to evaluate an affective connection with nature. The relationship to affect regulation and beauty is important as both have been found to mediate the relationship between nature connectedness and well-being [20].…”

“…The 16-item Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; [51]) was used to indicate ease of affect regulation. It has been found that affect regulation mediates the relationship between nature connectedness and well-being providing, an indication of alternative mechanisms and confirming the importance of affect [20]. Therefore, it is interesting to look at the relationship between affect regulation and nature connectedness.…”

“…An affective connection plays an important role in people's engagement with the natural environment [19] and is emerging as a potential mechanism for the well-being benefits [20]. Therefore, affect was a key factor informing the development of the new measure.…”

“…People are known to prefer aesthetically pleasing nature [31]. More recently, engagement with natural beauty has been shown to be involved in the relationship between nature connectedness and well-being [20,32,33].…”

Clinical Ecology—Transforming 21st-Century Medicine with Planetary Health in Mind

“…Utilizing nature relatedness scales opens up a door to provider-patient discourse on possible routes to health and vitality (determining how much active/passive time a patient spends in the outdoors, and the writing of "Green Prescriptions" [124][125][126]); since nature relatedness is also associated with pro-environmental and pro-social attitudes and behaviors-likely because experience in/with the natural world promotes concern for planetary health [127][128][129][130]-assessments allow for discussions concerning a collective "treatment" of personal and global problems, actively engaging both clinician and patient in planetary health [131]. Clinicians now have an opportunity to track nature relatedness with functional aspects of health.…”