Connectedness and well-being in simulated nature

• Autor(a) principal: Pasca, Laura
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Carrus, Giuseppe, Loureiro, Ana Luisa Cardoso Marques Teixeira, Navarro, Oscar, Panno, Angelo, Tapía-Follen, Cesar, Aragonés, Juan Ignacio
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10437/12512
• topic: PSICOLOGIA; PSICOLOGIA DO AMBIENTE; NATUREZA; BEM-ESTAR; PSYCHOLOGY; ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY; NATURE; WELL-BEING

People relate to nature physically, cognitively and emotionally, and this relationship fosters their well-being. There are several types of environments that vary according to their degree of naturalness, raising the question of whether they each exert different effects on people, connectedness and well-being. In order to study the extent to which environmental connectedness and well-being are a function of viewing different types of nature, we conducted a study with 454 participants from five different countries, who viewed images on a computer screen of one of three types of environment (totally natural, quasi-natural or non-natural) and responded to a series of associated items. The results of a mediation analysis showed an indirect effect of type of environment on well-being through positive and negative affect and connectedness to nature. The corresponding ANOVAs revealed differences in the connectedness and well-being elicited by different types of environment, and in preference: totally natural and quasi-natural environments (with no differences between them) showed differences with non-natural environments. Therefore, our study results suggest the usefulness of images of natural environments in fostering people's well-being and connectedness to nature.