Redesigning walking brochures using behaviour change theory: implications for walking intentions in natural environments

Abstract

Summary Natural environments can be used to promote health through facilitating recreational walking. However, efforts to encourage this often neglect messages identified in psychological research that are effective at influencing intentions to walk. This is despite the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence stating that promotional efforts should utilize theoretical frameworks of behaviour change and be targeted towards less active adults. As an illustrative example, this experiment compared a prototypical recreational walking brochure with an “enhanced” version including such persuasive messages on people’s intentions to walk for recreation in natural environments. The enhanced brochure heightened intentions for inexperienced recreational walkers through our hypothesized mechanisms, but appeared to dissuade already-experienced walkers. Optimal messaging strategies in recreational walking brochures require tailoring to more and less active readerships. Guidelines are provided for authors of recreational walking brochures, though the principles and techniques could easily be extended to other means of outdoor walking promotion.

Nature Contact and General Health: Testing Multiple Serial Mediation Pathways with Data from Adults in 18 Countries

“…The present findings therefore support the conclusions of previous reviews of interventions suggesting that efforts to promote the use of greenspace must accompany any greening intervention to have successful implications for certain facets of health like physical activity, social contact, or mental well-being (Hunter et al 2019). They may include supporting and promoting social programmes of events (van den Bogerd et al 2021) or carefully designed promotional materials (Elliott et al 2020a). Moreover, given that people often visit recreational destinations that are further than 1 km from their home (Hillsdon et al 2015), it is not clear from these or previous findings, whether neighbourhood natural environments are the same ones being most often used by residents for recreational purposes (Pyky et al 2019); although the much stronger association between coastal proximity and coastal visits than the equivalent associations for green spaces and inland waters, suggests that local visits may be especially high among coastal communities.…”

A mixed-methods exploration of virtual reality as a tool to promote green exercise

“…Promotion of green exercise is thus important to achieve public health goals 3 , and visits to local natural environments should be encouraged in the population. In this respect, while there is large consensus on the importance of interventions that act on the physical and perceived environment, such as increasing accessibility to and safety of local natural environments 3 , 17 , initiatives that focus on behaviour changes have been also proposed as effective strategies to promote green exercise 18 – 20 . In particular, as virtual reality (VR) technology is becoming increasingly popular and economically accessible, it may represent an additional tool to complement the current initiatives to promote green exercise.…”