Abstract
Previous studies have shown that contact with urban green spaces can produce positive effects on people's stress, health and well-being levels. However, much of this research has been conducted in the temperate regions of Europe or North America. Additionally, most studies have only compared the effects of urban and natural areas on health and well-being, but not made a finer distinction between different types of urban green spaces. We tested the relationship between well-being and the access or use of different types of green spaces among young adults in Singapore, a tropical city-state. The results showed that extraversion and emotional stability increased subjective well-being, positive affect and life satisfaction and decreased stress and negative affect. In addition, we found that level of physical activity increased positive affect and health problems increased negative affect. Neither access to green spaces nor the use of green spaces in Singapore significantly affected the well-being metrics considered, contradicting findings in the temperate regions of the world. We hypothesize that the differences in temperature and humidity and the higher greenery and biodiversity levels outside parks in Singapore could explain this phenomenon. Our results thus question the universality of the relationship between well-being and park usage and highlight the need for more research into the multifaceted effects of green spaces on well-being in the tropics.
Highlights
It has been historically suggested that urban environments contribute to poor mental health and well-being [1]
497 students participated, out of which 426 returned complete questionnaires that were used in the final dataset. 173 responses were from the online survey and the remaining 253 responses were from surveys conducted in lectures
The model average from the information theoretic approach showed no strong evidence that any green space variables significantly affected subjective well-being (SWB), i.e. the confidence intervals of all the relevant green space variables overlapped with zero (Fig 3, p-values > 0.05, Table 1)
Summary
It has been historically suggested that urban environments contribute to poor mental health and well-being [1]. Increased prevalence of psychiatric disorders, including depression, psychosis and anxiety disorders, have been reported in urban areas as compared to rural areas [2,3,4]. This is an issue of increasing concern as urbanization is projected to increase from 54% to 66% by 2050 [5]. Cities face a host of social problems and environmental stressors which can contribute to declines in mental health and well-being, such as overcrowding, noise and pollution [3, 6].
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