Can Urban Forest Settings Evoke Positive Emotion? Evidence on Facial Expressions and Detection of Driving Factors

Ping Liu, Mengnan Liu, Tingting Xia, Yutao Wang and Hongxu Wei
Additional contact information
Ping Liu: College of Forestry, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
Mengnan Liu: College of Forestry, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
Tingting Xia: College of Forestry, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
Yutao Wang: College of Forestry, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110866, China
Hongxu Wei: Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Environment, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130102, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-16

Abstract: There is increasing interest in experiences of urban forests because relevant studies have revealed that forest settings can promote mental well-being. The mental response to a forest experience can be evaluated by facial expressions, but relevant knowledge is limited at large geographical scales. In this study, a dataset of 2824 photos, detailing the evaluated age (toddler, youth, middle-age, and senior citizen) and gender of urban forest visitors, was collected from Sina Weibo (a social media application similar to Twitter in China) between 1–7 October 2018, in 12 randomly chosen cities in China. Happy and sad expressions were rated as scores by FireFACE software V1.0, and the positive response index (PRI) was calculated by subtracting sad scores from happy scores. Regional environmental factors were collected to detect driving forces using regression analyses. Happy scores were higher in forests than in urban settings, while sad scores for toddlers were lower in forests than in promenades and squares. Females showed more positive emotional expressions than males. Increases in happy scores were driven by the increase of daily minimum temperature; while PRI declined with increases in latitude. Overall, an urban forest experience can evoke positive emotions, which is likely due to comfortable feelings in warm temperatures.

Keywords: green infrastructure; forest bathing; sustainable urban forestry; functional services; sentimental response (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/8687/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/8687/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:8687-:d:607980

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().