Nature as a source of health and well‐being

Hughes, Joelene; Pretty, Jules; Macdonald, David W.

doi:10.1002/9781118520178.ch9

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 81 publications

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“…Improvements derived from recreation and tourism have received particular attention (Kühnel and Sonnentag, 2011;Dolnicar et al, 2012;Chen and Petrick, 2013;Bimonte and Faralla, 2015;Coghlan, 2015;Zuo et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2016;Uysal et al, 2016). Mental health improvements are commonly coupled with physical and physiological gains (Pretty et al, 2005(Pretty et al, , 2007Hughes et al, 2013;Astell-Burt et al, 2014;Haluza et al, 2014); but few studies to date have distinguished these mechanisms experimentally (Mitchell, 2013;Pasanen et al, 2014;Sandifer et al, 2015). Equally, few have considered the complex patterns of nature exposure which individuals experience in practice (Hartig et al, 2011).…”

Section: Mental Health Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic Value of Parks via Human Mental Health: An Analytical Framework

Buckley

Brough

2017

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Exposure to nature yields a wide range of mental health benefits. Improvements in mental health have substantial economic value, through: reduced mental healthcare costs; improved workplace productivity; and reduced costs of antisocial behavior, both public, and private. These economic gains represent an unquantified ecosystem service attributable to conservation. Since most individual people, and hence most politicians and policy-makers, care more about the private good of individual health than the public good of ecosystem and biodiversity conservation, calculating the economic value of nature via its contributions to human mental health could prove influential in achieving conservation goals. Here, we review relevant literature, establish a framework for these calculations, and identify immediate information gaps and research priorities. Current estimates rely on assumptions, but are similar in scale to those from tourism and recreation, which do influence policy.

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