 Evaluating the relaxation effects of emerging forest-therapy tourism: A multidisciplinary approachYasuo Ohe, Harumi Ikei, Chorong Song and Yoshifumi Miyazaki Tourism Management, 2017, vol. 62, issue C, 322-334 Abstract: Considering the increasing demand for rural areas to play a role in easing stress mainly experienced by urban dwellers, we investigated from a multidisciplinary collaborative approach, i.e., physiological, psychological, and rural business management perspectives, the relaxation effects of forest-therapy tourism, an emerging type of rural tourism, on a group of urban office workers. Also investigated were conditions necessary for a sustainable rural business in Chizu, western Japan. First, the results verified physiological and psychological relaxation effects, which lasted from three to five days after forest therapy. The lasting physiological and psychological effects among those with systolic blood pressure ≥120 mmHg, however, were weaker than in the entire sample. Second, due to the ageing and depopulation of the local community, increasing the number of households that provided home stay services was difficult. In summary, it is necessary to fully integrate scientific evidence to support a viable new rural tourism business. Keywords: Forest therapy tourism; Relaxation; Rural resource-based tourism; Physiological effects; Subjective scoring; Preventive health effects (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:62:y:2017:i:c:p:322-334 DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2017.04.010 Access Statistics for this article Tourism Management is currently edited by Chris Ryan More articles in Tourism Management from Elsevier |
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