Enjoying nature, not just visiting it, linked to greater happiness and life satisfaction, study finds

A new study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology suggests that simply enjoying the experience of being in nature may be more strongly associated with happiness and life satisfaction than the frequency of outdoor activities. While being physically present in natural environments like parks or hiking trails is commonly thought to boost well-being, the findings indicate that emotional engagement with nature plays a more central role. The research also finds that physical contact with nature might not directly enhance well-being and, when considered alongside perceptual enjoyment, could even negatively influence the relationship.

The researchers conducted this study to examine how different types of nature contact—specifically, perceptual and physical—relate to subjective well-being. Although a large body of prior research has emphasized the mental health benefits of spending time in natural environments, results have been mixed.

Much of the literature has focused on either how often people go outdoors or how connected they feel to nature, but less attention has been paid to the emotional enjoyment people get from nature itself. The team aimed to explore whether the enjoyment of nature, independent of how often people physically engage with it, contributes to greater happiness and life satisfaction.

“I am a survey methodologist, but subjective well-being, particularly happiness and life satisfaction, and environmental issues have been my research interests since graduate school,” said study author Pei-shan Liao of the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Academia Sinica.

“This publication is part of a series based on my research. Another key objective is to promote and validate the question items on nature contact and enjoyment. These items, derived from the ISSP 2020 Environment module, were proposed by the Taiwanese team to measure positive aspects of natural environment through intentional interaction. We are happy and satisfied with the results.”

For their new study, the researchers used data from the 2020 Taiwan Social Change Survey, a nationally representative dataset collected from over 1,800 adults across Taiwan between June 2020 and February 2021. The survey focused on environmental issues and included questions about participants’ frequency of outdoor activities, how much they enjoyed being in nature, their general happiness, and life satisfaction. These responses were then combined with environmental data on temperature, rainfall, and air quality at the township level to assess how external conditions might influence the opportunity for nature contact.

To measure physical contact with nature, participants reported how often they engaged in outdoor leisure activities such as hiking, swimming, or birdwatching. Enjoyment of nature was assessed by asking respondents to rate how much they enjoyed being outside in natural settings. Happiness and life satisfaction were measured with standard single-item questions asking participants to rate their general happiness and overall satisfaction with life on a five-point scale.

The researchers also accounted for several background variables known to influence well-being, including age, gender, income, marital status, education, employment status, religious activity, perceived health, and social status. Additionally, they included contextual factors such as whether people thought their neighborhood was affected by air pollution or extreme weather, and how their outdoor activity habits changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using a two-stage statistical model, the researchers first examined what factors predicted how often participants engaged in outdoor activities. They found that enjoyment of nature was a strong predictor of outdoor activity frequency, meaning that people who enjoyed nature more were also more likely to spend time outside. Environmental factors like January rainfall and local perceptions of air pollution also played a role.

In the second stage of analysis, the team looked at how enjoyment and physical activity each related to subjective well-being. When examining happiness, they found that enjoyment of nature was consistently associated with higher happiness scores. However, physical contact with nature—how often people actually went outside—was not positively related to happiness. In fact, after adjusting for possible statistical bias, greater physical engagement with nature showed a surprising negative association with happiness.

Life satisfaction showed a similar pattern. While enjoyment of nature was associated with greater life satisfaction after statistical adjustments, physical activity in nature again showed a negative association when modeled as an endogenous factor. In other words, people who enjoyed nature reported higher well-being, but those who more frequently participated in outdoor activities didn’t necessarily feel more satisfied with their lives—and might even have felt slightly less so when all other factors were considered.

“The negative association between visiting nature and subjective well-being, including both happiness and life satisfaction, surprised us,” Liao told PsyPost. “We have tried different coding scheme for data analysis but the findings remained the same. It is possible that enjoying contact with nature makes people want to engage in outdoor activities more than they are actually able to, which may lead to dissatisfaction with their situation. Such results may also be attributed to the study’s non-Western setting. It will be great to have data from more countries to further examine the issue.”

Alternatively, individuals who are already struggling with low well-being might seek out nature more often as a coping strategy, which could obscure any positive effects of outdoor time when analyzing the data.

Beyond the nature-related measures, the researchers also confirmed that other well-established factors play significant roles in shaping happiness and life satisfaction. Better self-reported health, higher perceived social status, being married, and participating more frequently in religious activities were all associated with greater well-being. The researchers also found a U-shaped relationship between age and happiness, with middle-aged adults reporting lower happiness than both younger and older individuals.

Interestingly, while objective environmental factors such as temperature and air quality were included in the analysis, they were not strongly related to well-being outcomes. Only one seasonal variable—rainfall in January—showed a significant relationship, possibly reflecting regional concerns about drought. Subjective perceptions of environmental problems, such as perceived air pollution, were more strongly linked to well-being, echoing earlier studies that highlight the importance of how people interpret their surroundings rather than just the environmental conditions themselves.

“Most people are likely to feel happy or satisfied with their lives when they visit a natural environment and enjoy the experience,” Liao said. “However, if they do not find joy in the visit, being in nature may actually reduce their happiness or life satisfaction, possibly due to uncomfortable weather conditions. In sum, enjoyment with nature serves as a more important stimulus of subjective well-being than physical contact with nature.”

As with any study, there are caveats to consider. Because the data were collected at a single point in time, it is not possible to draw firm conclusions about cause and effect. Additionally, the study relied on single-item measures for happiness, life satisfaction, and other variables, which can limit the depth and reliability of the findings. However, these kinds of simple measures are often used in large-scale surveys for practical reasons and have been shown to correlate well with more complex instruments.

Despite these limitations, the study adds an important nuance to our understanding of how contact with nature relates to happiness and life satisfaction. It suggests that emotional engagement with nature—the enjoyment one feels when in natural surroundings—may matter more than how often someone goes outdoors. Physical activity in natural settings, while often assumed to be beneficial, does not show a straightforward relationship with well-being once environmental and individual differences are accounted for.

“My long-term goals are to understand the relationship between subjective well-being and various different environmental issues,” Liao explained. “This may include, but not limited to, some pro-environmental behaviors, such as water conservation or the use of electric vehicles. I would also like to further compare the contribution of objective environmental conditions and subjective perceptions of environmental issues to subjective well-being.”

“People should know that protecting the environment isn’t just good for nature; it’s also good for their happiness.”

The study, “Exploring the link between subjective well-being, nature enjoyment, and physical contact with nature,” was authored by Pei-shan Liao, Daigee Shaw, Le-Yu Chen, and Chuan-Yao Lin.