Abstract
BackgroundPrevious studies reported positive associations between perceived neighborhood greenness and mental health. There has been a focus on perceived neighborhood greenness at people’s home environment or in general, but data are lacking on greenness at working places or other locations where they actually spend most of their time during their day.MethodsThis study investigated the perceived greenness of college students’ home and study environments and its relation to mental health. An online survey collected data from 601 participants with a mean age of 24 years, living in or around and studying in the city of Graz, Austria. The perceived greenness at home and at university was assessed using questions on quality of and access to green space; mental health was measured with the WHO-5 well-being index. Uni- and multivariate regression analyses were used to analyze the data.ResultsThe analyses revealed positive associations between perceived greenness at home and mental health as well as perceived greenness at university and mental health. This adds more evidence to the existing literature that perceiving the environment as green is positively related to better mental health.ConclusionsFuture research will have to incorporate objective greenness measures as a means of controlling for the reliability of the measurements and investigate the effects of different environments people are exposed to over the course of a day.
Highlights
Previous studies reported positive associations between perceived neighborhood greenness and mental health
According to the biophilia-hypothesis, humans have developed and maintained an affinity for nature throughout their evolution [1, 2], which makes positive outcomes from exposure to green spaces on the human body and mind stand to reason
Similar to the findings related to greenness at home, we propose that green around university campuses has similar effects on mental health
Summary
Previous studies reported positive associations between perceived neighborhood greenness and mental health. There has been a focus on perceived neighborhood greenness at people’s home environment or in general, but data are lacking on greenness at working places or other locations where they spend most of their time during their day. With human evolution came industrialization, advancing technology and sedentary behavior. These general advancements, as well as grey colored facades, industrial areas and man-made pollution came to existence just about a blink of an eye ago. According to the biophilia-hypothesis, humans have developed and maintained an affinity for nature throughout their evolution [1, 2], which makes positive outcomes from exposure to green spaces on the human body and mind stand to reason. “greenness” is linked to restorative effects on cognition and stress [3, 4], meaning that green space improves mental recovery after stress and reduces factors associated with decreased wellbeing.
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