How does childhood exposure to natural environments influence adult well-being?

Ours is an urbanizing world that in many locations means people migrating from rural to urban environments, as well as leading to them to adapt psychologically to a new set of daily routines and establish new social connections. With the expansion and increasing intensity of human intervention in the landscape, there are an increasing number of new urban residents who feel disconnected from the more natural environments of their childhoods. This can lead to the psychological pain of “homelessness” and loss of “rootedness”. There is a need to identify approaches that can help improve the adaptability of new urban residents to this transition to improve their well-being.

Research by PhD student Ying Wang shows that spending time in and valuing natural environments in childhood leads to higher attachment to these kinds of places in adulthood. This attachment directly impacts adult well-being, but its influence is also conditioned on childhood-adult environmental differences. She has published a feature based on an article she published (in Chinese) earlier this year.

Read the feature

Ying Wang is a Human Geography and Environment PhD student, co-supervised by Dr Steve Cinderby and Dr Alison Dyke in SEI York. Her research explores how the rural aesthetics mediated by nostalgia influence stress-related restorative effects, in the context of “The Falling Leaf Returns To Root” of Chinese traditional culture. With a background in Landscape Architecture and Landscape and Well-being, Ying’s research interests centre around environmental (in)equality and (in)health justice, natural environment, mental health, and decision making.