Effects of Three Levels of Green Exercise, Physical and Social Environments, Personality Traits, Physical Activity, and Engagement with Nature on Emotions and Attention

Ke-Tsung Han
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Ke-Tsung Han: Department of Landscape Architecture, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taichung 41170, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-30

Abstract: The current study examined the effects of the three levels of green exercise on people’s psychological health using a randomized trial with a pretest and posttest design and further explored which variables of the physical environment (thermal comfort, noise, and air pollution), social environment (the number of companions and crowdedness), personality traits, physical activity (intensity and frequency), and engagement with nature may help explain experiences during the three levels of green exercise using a cross-sectional approach. Field studies were conducted to test the study’s hypotheses. The participants were 95 students from a technology university in Taiwan. The experiment comprised a 15-min green exercise in a park. No significant differences were found in emotions and attention between the three levels of green exercise. However, a 15-min green exercise of any level significantly improved emotions and attention. Furthermore, fatigue was significantly and negatively associated with daily transportation-related physical activity, agreeableness, and engagement with nature. Moreover, the total mood disturbance was significantly and negatively associated with engagement with nature and daily transportation-related physical activity. The degree of engagement with nature played a pivotal role in green exercise. This study provided the evidence that quantified engagement with nature is beneficial for quantified psychological health for the first time.

Keywords: Stress Reduction Theory; Attention Restoration Theory; the international physical activity questionnaire; the big five test; the profile of mood states; spatial span forward test; digit span backward test; actigraph; Intelligent Device for Energy Expenditure and Activity; social ecological perspective (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 (1)

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