Abstract
Public expectations of forests as high-quality restorative environments that facilitate subjective well-being and stress relief along with numerous health benefits have been rising sharply during recent decades. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying restrictive measures also transformed forests into some of the few places to spend time away from home. The presented study drew on the assumption that the pandemic situation and a rise in the number of forest visits would affect the experience, recognition, and appreciation of the well-being aspects related to spending time in forests. The study goal was to elucidate the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the relationships between forest visits, well-being and stress relief, emotions, perception of nature and forest value and importance, pro-environmental behavior, and societal expectations of the role of forests and forest ecosystem services. A survey using a digital questionnaire was conducted several months after the pandemic outbreak on a representative sample of the Slovak population. The Wilcoxon test and ordinal regression analysis were used to identify significant relationships, e.g., between the recency of anger episodes and the number of forest visits. The results showed that the pandemic strengthened the perception of forests as a high-quality restorative environment and that emotions associated with forest visits played an important role in the perceived importance of forests and their possible overexploitation. The results underscore the urgent need to put demands for forest recreation on par with the forest bioeconomy and to sensitize forest visitors to management and conservation requirements.
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Introduction
Forests benefit human well-being by providing multiple ecosystem services. They include provisioning services such as primary productivity, wood production, and habitat formation; regulating services, e.g., nutrient fluxes, carbon sequestration, water infiltration, cooling and purification, flood control, and climate regulation; and cultural and experiential services, including recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, and scientific benefits (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005; Felipe-Lucia et al. 2018; Temperli et al. 2020). Safeguarding the biophysical base of forest ecosystem services (FES) and their flows is vital for various reasons. For instance, the basic needs of people, including employment, are expected to depend even more on provisions from the primary sectors of the economy based on ecosystem services, such as forestry (Day et al. 2014). Similarly, the regulatory services of forests are gaining additional importance under conditions of global climate change (Fleischer et al. 2017). Last but not least, the demand for noninstrumental forest values such as aesthetic, cultural, spiritual, and recreational appreciation has been rising in recent decades (Patel et al. 1999; Tarrant and Cordell 2002; Blazevska et al. 2012; Pichlerová et al. 2021).
The provision of recreation services has been increasingly integrated into the rural economy and it can be expected to become and explicit part of the forestry portfolio (Simpson et al. 2008; Mann et al. 2022). The trend is marked by trade-offs among competing functions due to their distinct spatial–temporal scale characteristics and different stakeholders (Wang and Fu 2013). As a result, forest owners might encounter challenges when visitors develop psychological ownership toward certain forest areas (Avey et al. 2009; Weinbrenner et al. 2021). This tension has also been captured by some recent international surveys. For example, the Innventia International Consumer Survey (2016) aimed to assess consumer perceptions, current trends, and the role of materials in a biobased economy revealed a split between respondents who expressed positive attitudes toward the use of wood and wood-based products and those who had apprehensive views about possible forest overuse. Besides, a large portion of the cited survey participants linked forests with relaxing and recreation. This association is supported by a growing body of evidence that nature and forest recreation facilitate physical and mental health, reduce stress, anxiety and depression, and reinforce overall well-being (Hartig et al. 1996; Geisler et al. 2010; Karjalainen et al. 2010).
Although people have assigned a high value to various benefits of forest visits in the past (Schama 1995; Bell et al. 2008; Paletto et al. 2013, 2017), these have gained additional importance during the COVID-19 pandemic. The anti-pandemic measures included school and workplace closures, cancelation of public events, restrictions on mass gatherings, public transport closures, stay-at-home orders, constraints on internal movements, and international travel controls (Koh et al. 2020). Research shows that pandemic-induced measures such as social distancing may affect people’s mental well-being and induce a shift toward negative emotions (Cerbara et al. 2020). As a result, people feel deprived of social contact, work, cultural and sports activities and life as we know it (Esterwood and Saeed 2020; ** with the pandemic and mirror the complexity of the pandemic situation and its impacts. For instance, while the pandemic made forests some of the few places available for spending time outdoors, its accompanying measures produced considerable obstacles to reaching them, particularly for elderly people. In addition to seeking well-being and stress relief, NFV increased owing to other important motivations. These likely included spending time with others in a less restrictive environment, as well as maintaining an existential sense of belonging that normally goes far beyond a sense of well-being and concerns identity and self-anchoring (Häggström 2019). Even against this situational backdrop, the Wald statistics suggested that demographic characteristics, i.e., age (AC) and the settlement size (SS) were significant predictors of ΔNFV. Specifically, younger respondents and respondents from smaller settlements had a higher probability of making more forest visits during the pandemic than before, indicated by the negative, statistically significant estimate values. The importance of demographic characteristics in the ordered logit model (Table 4) was in agreement with findings that NFV increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and was associated with shorter distances to the nearest forest (Pichlerová et al. 2021). In addition, people who stated that their appreciation of forests had grown strongly during the pandemic (Q9) were also likely to visit forests more often than before.
Among factors linked with the health effects of time spent in forests and the appreciation of forests as valuable restorative environments, there was a tendency toward NFV increase (ΔNFV1) with the stated stress reduction after a forest visit (Q2, p = 0.106). While fighting stress and improving well-being are often considered together as part of the forest health effect on people (Oh et al. 2017; Doimo et al. 2020), a significant effect of improved SWB from ΔNFV was not detected. We deduce that stress reduction functioned as a more direct motivation for forest visits than SWB. For instance, stress reduction is currently easily measurable and thus “objectified” by commercially available and widely used activity trackers. In comparison, evaluating one's SWB involves more complex mental processes. It is possible that a positive SWB response to NFV increase (ΔNFV1) was a slower and incremental process, only gradually integrating the experience of stress-reduction. For example, Lee et al. (2022) suggested that if the stress of forest users is reduced, direct or indirect mental well-being is also increased. Interestingly, people who began to think during the pandemic that forests were overexploited (Q12) had a marginally significant probability of making fewer forest visits than before. We hypothesize that the concern for forest overexploitation was at least tangentially linked with a feeling of anxiety triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic situation, especially in socially and psychologically more vulnerable individuals.
Overall, the results suggest that NFV change occurred not only due to causal relationships between the time spent in nature and stress relief or well-being connected to it but also simply because forests became a place to retreat to—whether alone or with family and friends. For many visitors, forests provided the same functions during this extraordinary period as public spaces (Weinbrenner et al. 2021) and numerous other restorative environments. These aspects, which stress the exchange of instrumental and emotional support in closer relationships, are highlighted by RRT. We hypothesize that although RRT may belong to the deciding factors affecting ΔNFV, its effects were often generated in forests, so there were overlaps or even positive synergies between various aspects emphasized by SRT, ART, and RRT.
Recency of feelings of anger
Ordinal regression revealed that the prepandemic NFVs (NFV1, p = 0.049), sex (SX, p = 0.037), age category (AC, p < 0.001), and the feeling of gratitude associated with spending time in forests (Q4, p = 0.037) explained approximately 12% of variability (Nagelkerke's R2 = 0.123) in the recency of anger episodes (Q6) during the COVID-19 pandemic (Table 5). Specifically, there was a higher probability of more recent anger episodes in women and younger individuals. According to Vahia et al. (2020), older people may have traits of resilience related to life experience, wisdom, and quality of relationships that have enabled them to withstand the stresses of the recent pandemic better than younger people. In terms of forest recreation, only prepandemic forest visits (NFV1) were predictive of anger recency during the pandemic in that the likelihood of a recent feeling of anger was reduced by 0.031 through each additional visit. Interestingly, a comparable influence of forest visits taken during the pandemic (NFV2) was not observed. Since only 5.8% of the respondents stated that they did not take at least one monthly forest visit during normal conditions, compared to 17.6% during the pandemic, we hypothesize that the effect of NFV1 resulted from a long-term, gradual build-up of resilience against anger-provoking stimuli. The analysis in “Pandemic-induced change in the number of forest visits” section also showed that older people were more likely to reduce NFV in response to COVID-19. Also, Beall et al. (2022) found that those who engaged in more outdoor and nature-based activities prior to the pandemic experienced a smaller decrease in SWB. In contrast, the NFV2 effect on the feelings of anger was probably mitigatory rather than preventive, especially in younger people who tended to visit forests more frequently after the pandemic outbreak. It is likely that the possible mitigatory effects did not last as long under extreme COVID-19 pandemic pressures. For example, a short exposure (5 min) to a forest video during total lockdown induced a momentary self-perceived relaxing effect (Zabini et al. 2020). A subsequent recognition and appreciation of the possible mitigatory effect by forest visitors could have the potential to establish an unexpected positive link between anger and gratitude (Q4) when understood as feelings. Interestingly, anger and gratitude showed a negative correlation when assessed and analyzed as overall tendencies or personality traits (Breen et al. 2010). Although we did not study the underlying processes in more detail, our results highlight both preventive and mitigatory benefits of time spent in forests. This further supports the role of forests as a valuable restorative environment that, according to Hartig (2021), allows a person to gain distance from the demands that caused the given need for restoration and promotes restoration by distracting them, further attracting and holding their attention, and resulting in increased self-reported happiness and reduced anger or anxiety.
Pro-environmental behavior
The model comprising the effects of feelings evoked by visiting forests, the perception of forests, and the assessment of their exploitation explained more than half of the variability in the respondents' pro-environmental behavior represented by the increase in recycling during the pandemic (Table 6). The increase in recycling was selected as the dependent variable since the share of Slovak respondents that favored recycling as an important pro-environmental behavior was the highest among countries partaking in the Consumers and Biobased Materials survey (2018). In contrast to the previously analyzed independent variables, demographic factors did not emerge as prominent predictors of the increase in recycling (Q10). Although modest gender differences in environmental concern within the general public exist in North American and European countries (McCright and Sundström 2013), this pattern has not been examined during the COVID-19 pandemic. With regard to age, various studies have not provided conclusive findings. Johnson and Schwadel (2018) found large age effects, with young people being more likely to be pro-environmental in their views. In contrast, Wang et al. (2021) found a positive relationship between aging and pro-environmental behavior. Our results from the pandemic period showed an increased, marginally significant tendency (p = 0.054) toward more recycling only with respect to settlement size, specifically among individuals living in small settlements (SS 2: 1000–4999 inhabitants). In contrast to findings that nature and forest recreation and the appreciation of the natural world usually boost pro-environmental behavior (Alcock et al. 2020), we did not detect this pattern with regard to ΔNFV. We deduce that since nature and forests were among few places to visit during the pandemic, NFV change occurred for very diverse reasons, not necessarily triggering the link between the state of the environment and human behavior. Taken alone, even feeling better after forest visit (Q1) was a marginally significant predictor of no increase in recycling. Only individuals who also developed feelings of gratitude connected with spending time in forests (Q4), declared an increased appreciation of the environment (Q8) and began to think more that forests were subject to overharvesting (Q12) also began to recycle more during the pandemic. Here, the variability in people's natural or culturally shaped disposition toward gratitude or reciprocity may be very relevant. According to Singh (2015), the feeling of gratitude toward nature and forests is produced by the perception of various natural ecosystems as gifts to humans and nonhumans, embedded in reciprocity and communication with their biophysical environments. In terms of reciprocity, beliefs that the pandemic represents a warning signal from nature were often articulated during the pandemic peak time (Haasova et al. 2020). Therefore, they may also have facilitated increased pro-environmental behavior, irrespective of demographic characteristics, NFVs, and other factors. However, for most factor levels, people with a higher appreciation of forests who claimed to have positive feelings linked to forests were more likely to pursue increased pro-environmental behavior in the form of recycling.
Recommendations for further research, policies, and management
In line with the most recent analysis of the trends in FES research (Chen et al. 2022), our results suggest that further in-depth studies of the internal correlation between FES and human well-being would likely produce further relevant findings. Their established effect size and statistical significance show that FES oriented at restoration, stress relief, and SWB have been recognized and appreciated by the large majority of citizens, even more so when faced with global threats. It is important that public health, land, and forest administrators and managers acknowledge these and other perceived forest benefits and transpose them into currently prevalent resource-oriented concepts, policies, and management plans. Rapid implementation is urgently needed since the forest-based bioeconomy concept still largely fails to address synergies and conflicts with broader ecological processes and ecosystem services (D'Amato et al. 2017). At the same time, the designation and provision of sufficient forest areas able to support the restoration of the human psychological agency should be accompanied by public awareness of science-based forestry interventions that strengthen the climate resilience of multifunctional managed forests. The sensitization of the public to management and conservation requirements for forests, particularly in periurban areas, is essential since forest visitors tend to perceive forests as a public space (Weinbrenner et al. 2021).
Ultimately, it remains the responsibility of governments to recognize and acknowledge the demands for and benefits of forest recreation for the whole society and provide sufficient incentives for forest owners and managers to safeguard and produce an expanded, inclusive FES portfolio based on forests that are less vulnerable to disturbances. In Europe, this vision appears to overlap with the desired turn of the forestry sector toward closer-to-nature forestry management as a concept proposed in the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 (Larsen et al. 2022).
Conclusions
Research on SWB and on forest perception, emotions, and pro-environmental behavior in relation to forests and forest visits before and during the COVID-19 pandemic showed several significant effects, mainly in terms of perceived stress reduction, recency of feelings of anger, and preparedness to engage in the circular economy through recycling. The results supported our working hypotheses that the pandemic strengthened the perception of forests as a high-quality restorative environment and that emotions associated with spending time in forests played an important role in the perceived importance of forests and their utilization. However, it is possible that in addition to the immediate perceptual response, the subsequent cognitive evaluation of forest sensory stimuli was also involved in the respondents' assessments, and forest visitors should be sensitized to management and conservation requirements for forests. The established association between forest visits and the feeling of gratitude as one of the identified emotions could be a valuable asset in the creation of a desired, inclusive, and resilient FES portfolio on a wider scale. The alignment of patterns established on the national scale with the global assessment of nature's contribution in co** with the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that the study's novel findings can be generalized in the context of other similar situations and trends exacerbating the demands and pressures on individuals and human society as a whole.
Data availability
The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.
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Funding
This research was funded by the Project RISE-WELL—Critical solutions for elderly well-being (Grant Agreement No. 860173) awarded by the European Commission through the MSCA-ITN-EID: European Industrial Doctorates Funding Scheme (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2019), the Project CHARMED—Characterization of a green microenvironment and to study its impact upon health and well-being in the elderly as a way forward for health tourism (Grant Agreement No. 734684) awarded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020-MSCA-RISE-2016 Scheme, and the Grant Number 1/0836/18 awarded by the Scientific Grant Agency of Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Sport of the Slovak Republic.
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Conceptualization, MP, JV, VP, and DÖ; methodology, VP, JV; formal analysis, JV, VP; writing—original draft preparation, MP, VP, KL, DT, and LN; writing—review and editing, DÖ, MP; visualization, JV, VP; project administration, MP; funding acquisition, MP. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Pichlerová, M., Výbošťok, J., Önkal, D. et al. Increased appreciation of forests and their restorative effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ambio 52, 647–664 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01816-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01816-x