Recovery from daily demands and stress

In many western industrialized countries everyday life is defined by a sedantary lifestyle, stress, and high workload. Past research showed that negative health impacts could be associated with this. At the same time, results from environmental and health psychology indicate that visiting nature and forests promotes health and wellbeing. Thus, visiting nature seems to be promising for recovering from stress and demands.

These studies, however, mainly focus on predefined behavior (e.g., comparing forest walks to city walks). This means that alternative restoration behavior has so far mainly benn ommited in research. Thus, mainly two questions will be adressed by this project. First, we want to analyse what people do in everyday life to restore from stress and demands, and second, we want to shed light on how powerful and/or effective visiting nature is compared to e.g. relaxing at home and watching TV.

The results will be discussed in the frame of restoration and health promotion.