Health-Related Effects of Short Stays at Mountain Meadows, a River and an Urban Site—Results from a Field Experiment

Arne Arnberger, Renate Eder, Brigitte Allex, Martin Ebenberger, Hans-Peter Hutter, Peter Wallner, Nicole Bauer, Johann G. Zaller and Thomas Frank
Additional contact information
Arne Arnberger: Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning, Department of Spatial, Landscape and Infrastructural Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna 1190, Austria
Renate Eder: Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning, Department of Spatial, Landscape and Infrastructural Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna 1190, Austria
Brigitte Allex: Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning, Department of Spatial, Landscape and Infrastructural Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna 1190, Austria
Martin Ebenberger: Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning, Department of Spatial, Landscape and Infrastructural Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna 1190, Austria
Hans-Peter Hutter: Department of Environmental Health, Center for Public Health, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria
Peter Wallner: Department of Environmental Health, Center for Public Health, Medical University Vienna, Vienna 1090, Austria
Nicole Bauer: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Economics and Social Sciences, Social Sciences in Landscape Research, Birmensdorf 8903, Switzerland
Johann G. Zaller: Institute of Zoology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna 1180, Austria
Thomas Frank: Institute of Zoology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna 1180, Austria

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-19

Abstract: The study compared psychological and physiological health effects of short-term stays at managed and abandoned meadows, a mountain river, and an urban site of a dependent sample of 22 adult participants (mean age 27) during an 11-day field trip. The study found that pulse rates decreased during the stays at all the meadows and the urban site while no decrease was observed at the river. Blood pressure increased at all sites during the stay, with no study-site differences for systolic, but for diastolic, blood pressure. Participants reported more positive psychological health effects as a result of their stays at the most remote meadow and the river on attention restoration, stress reduction and wellbeing compared to the urban site, while no differences in health perceptions were observed between managed and unmanaged meadows. This study suggests that perceived and measured health benefits were independent of the degree of naturalness of meadows. While differences measured on the physiological level between urban built and natural sites were marginal, psychological measures showed higher health benefits of the natural environments compared to the built one.

Keywords: the Alps; pulse rate; blood pressure; naturalness; landscape perceptions; sound perceptions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/12/2647/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/12/2647/ (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:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:12:p:2647-:d:185507

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

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