Abstract
This study addressed a methodological gap by comparing psychological and social outcomes of exercise in green outdoors versus built indoors settings, whilst rigorously controlling exercise mode and intensity. The hypotheses were that greater improvements or more desirable values for directed attention, mood, perceived exertion, social interaction time, intention for future exercise behaviour and enjoyment would be associated with outdoors compared to indoors exercise. Following a baseline session, paired participants completed two conditions of 15 min of cycling on an ergometer placed outside in a natural environment and inside in a laboratory setting in a randomized, counter-balanced order. At pre- and post-exercise, directed attention was measured with the digit span backwards task, and mood was assessed with the Profile of Mood States. During the exercise session, visual and verbal interactions were recorded by means of experimenter observations. After each exercise session, participants provided self-reports of their enjoyment of the exercise, perceived exertion and intention for future exercise in the same environment. Social interaction time was significantly greater during outdoors exercise versus indoors; on average, participants engaged in three minutes more social interaction during exercise outdoors compared to indoors. Social interaction time significantly predicted intention for future exercise in the outdoors condition, but did not in the indoor condition. There was a significant time by condition interaction for directed attention. Scores worsened in the indoors condition, but improved in the outdoors condition. There was no statistically-significant time by condition interaction for mood and no significant difference between conditions for either perceived exertion or intention. Taken together, these findings show that exercise in a natural environment may promote directed attention and social interactions, which may positively influence future exercise intentions.
Highlights
Physical inactivity costs the UK economy a total of £7.4 billion per year, £0.9 billion of which is via the National Health Service [1,2]
For the measure of social interaction time (Hypothesis (iv)), a within-between ANOVA found a statistically-significant effect for condition (F1,22 = 44.79, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.67), whereby social interaction time was greater in the outdoors condition compared to the indoors condition
The current study aimed to address the methodological gap in existing research of this kind by comparing a range of previously-reported psychological outcomes of exercise performed in green outdoors versus indoors environments, whilst controlling the exercise component
Summary
Physical inactivity costs the UK economy a total of £7.4 billion per year, £0.9 billion of which is via the National Health Service [1,2]. A growing pool of evidence suggests that compared to other environments, nature-based (”green”) spaces might promote greater health benefits gained from acute bouts of exercise and might better enable mechanisms that foster future adherence to exercise behaviours [6,7,8,9]. Such a combination of physical activity whilst simultaneously being exposed to nature has been termed ”green exercise” [9,10,11]. The current study sought to address the methodological gap in existing research of this kind by comparing a range of previously-reported psychological outcomes of exercise in green outdoors versus indoors settings, whilst rigorously controlling the exercise component. The hypotheses were that: (i) outdoors exercise would facilitate improvements in directed attention from pre- to post-exercise to a greater extent than indoors exercise [12,18,21]; (ii) outdoors exercise would facilitate improvements in mood from pre- to post-exercise to a greater extent than indoors exercise [6,7,8,9]; (iii) perceived exertion would be lower during outdoors exercise compared to indoors exercise [7,25,26,27]; (iv) accumulative time spent socially interacting during the exercise session would be greater during outdoors exercise compared to indoors exercise [8]; (v) greater intention for a future exercise behaviour would be reported following outdoors exercise compared to built indoors exercise [7]; (vi) social interaction time would predict intention for future exercise behaviour [8,39,40,41]; and (vii) greater enjoyment of the exercise session would be reported following outdoors exercise compared to indoors exercise [7]
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