Plain Language Summary: Biodiverse forests – happy people: Higher perceived biodiversity fosters well-being

By Kevin Rozario, Rachel Oh, Melissa Marselle, and Aletta Bonn.

Read the full paper here.

Forest visits for 20 minutes improve our mental health and well-being. These visits can help to reduce subjective feelings of stress and to increase attentional capacities. This is particularly true when people’s subjective perceptions of a forest’s biodiversity are high. As we’re experiencing a biodiversity, health and climate crisis, we need interdisciplinary approaches to reconcile the needs of healthy people on a healthy planet. It is therefore important to identify how to better combine biodiversity conservation with ecosystem management that supports human health and well-being. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the linkages between biodiversity and human health.

To better understand this relationship and the potential mechanisms underlying biodiversity-health linkages, we conducted a field experiment with 223 participants in three peri-urban forests in Europe within the Biodiversa funded Dr. Forest project. We investigated whether and how forest biodiversity, specifically, tree species diversity, influences mental health and well-being. We found that 20-minute visits to the forest positively impact well-being as compared to time spent in a human-built environment. In this study we could not, however, find an effect of measured tree species richness. This means that people benefitted from visiting a forest, irrespective of how many different tree species were present. Interestingly, however, subjective perceptions of biodiversity levels, that is, perceived biodiversity, mattered: The more biodiverse people thought the forest was, the better for their mental health and well-being.

Important implications can be drawn from our findings: Since both diverse and less diverse forests seem to offer well-being effects, managers can manage forests in a way that best suits biodiversity, climate buffering needs and public health. In addition, a more profound understanding of what it is that determines the perception of biodiversity is needed to foster the recreational potential of forests in an increasingly urbanised world. We recommend that public health programmes could encourage visits to forests as proactive health measures. At the same time restoring, conserving and planting forests can help to secure and enhance healthy, livable environments as a contribution to our planetary health.