Green space usage nurtures self-perceived health and life satisfaction, but how?

Urban planning should focus on ensuring access to green spaces and vegetation that offer opportunities for people to meet, socialize and be physically active in cities to support public health.

Background: The urban environment shapes human activity and offers avenues for promoting health. One such avenue is green space. Although green space is proposed to be a resource for health and wellbeing, there is limited insight into how usage of green space acts as a capacity builder for self-perceived health and life satisfaction among Nordic city dwellers. Thus, we examined (1) relationships between the amount of vegetation cover, perceived green space access and green space usage and (2) the extent to which potential relationships between green space usage and self-perceived health and life satisfaction were mediated through physical and social activity.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted as part of the NORDGREEN project, in which Stavanger municipality was involved. We used data from a sub-sample of citizens living in urban districts of Stavanger (n=5401) who participated in the County Public Health Survey in Rogaland in 2020. Information on socio-demography, perceived access to green space, frequency of green space usage, engagement in physical and social activity, self-perceived health and life satisfaction were obtained from the survey. The amount of vegetation cover within each citizen’s postal code area was computed and linked to the survey data using geographical information systems. Multinomial logistic regression was applied to examine if the amount of vegetation and perceived green space access were related to green space usage. To address the second objective, mediation models were fitted, and direct and indirect estimates were computed.

Results: We found a positive relationship between the amount of vegetation and frequency of green space visits. Likewise, a positive association between perceived green space access and green space usage was observed. Compared to residents who reported poor access and seldom/never used green spaces, participants who perceived their access to green spaces as good had 4.3 (95%CI= 3.19-5.79) and 5.6 (95%CI= 4.00-7.75) times higher odds for visiting green spaces 3-5 times/week and daily, respectively. Green space usage was significantly related to both good self-perceived health and higher life satisfaction. Visiting green spaces 3-5 times/week was associated with an increase in life satisfaction score by 0.58 (95%CI= 0.42-0.75). The mediation analyses showed that these associations could be largely explained by the indirect effects of green space usage through physical and social activity.

Conclusion: Our results highlight that having access to vegetation and green space is focal to promote green space usage, which in turn seem to be a viable capacity builder for health and wellbeing through being an arena for health-promoting activities.