Plain Language Summary: A review of direct, sensory human-nature interactions research.

By Maldwyn J. Evans, Kevin J. Gaston, Daniel T.C. Cox, and Masashi Soga.

Read the full paper here.

Research into the direct, sensory interactions that humans have with nature can be found in a wide range of disciplines, including ecology, environmental science, biology, geography, urban planning, sociology, psychology, and medicine.  With human-nature interactions research spanning such a wide range of disciplines, it is challenging to keep up with its development and trends. We, therefore, undertook a multidisciplinary text-analysis review of research on direct, sensory human-nature interactions.

Our review helped us to understand the main topics of research, the types of interactions, the disciplines within which they were researched in the literature, their growth through time, and their global localities and contexts. We used Web of Science and Scopus, two scientific paper indexing services, to search for, and collate, peer-reviewed articles that research direct, sensory interactions between humans and nature. We then analysed the resultant 2,773 articles using text-analysis techniques that allowed us to examine the main topics of research, and make inferences about the locations where those research topics were conducted and the taxa that was studied. We revealed an important divide, in which fields such as ecology, psychology, social science, environmental management, and tourism, focused on the benefits of interactions with nature while the medical fields tended to focus research on negative interactions with nature. Research about the benefits of direct interactions with nature has grown in recent years, but it has tended to be relevant to high-income countries, particularly those in temperate environments. Research about the costs, however, has tended to be relevant to countries in the tropics, where the prevalence of negative interactions with nature, such as snake bites, spider bites, and scorpion stings, is a huge public health issue. Of particular note was the very large amount of medical research on the causes and consequences of snake bites, particularly in Asia.

This recent attention towards positive human-nature interactions in high-income societies biases views of the relationship between people and nature. We argue, therefore, that research into human-nature interactions needs to take the next step towards a unified and holistic understanding of the benefits and costs of direct experiences with nature. This step is crucial to achieve a more sustainable future that benefits both biodiversity and human society, especially during great environmental and climatic change.