Research shows living near parks make a difference

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Thanks to SORP for publishing the following:
Living Near a Green Park; The “Life-Satisfaction” Factor
Courtesy of the Bird Education Network

by Paul Baicich

Living near a park — an urban park with green space, one that is nature-filled and bird-filled — can make a difference in lowering mental distress and raising a feeling of well-being or life-satisfaction.

These were the conclusions in a recent study in Psychological Science, results released by a team of four researchers out of the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter in the UK.

They even measured how much happiness a green urban area would produce. The data was taken from the British Household Panel Survey, a survey of UK households that ran annually from 1991-2001, interviewing over 10,000 adults.

Not only did these researchers conclude that people are happier when living in urban areas with greater amounts of green space, they measured a “life satisfaction boost” generally equivalent to one-fifth to one-quarter of the increase associated with finding a job or being married. The increase in life satisfaction that accompanied nearby green space “was equivalent to 28% of the effect of being married rather than unmarried and 21% of being employed rather than unemployed.”

While the impact of such green-ness at the individual level might be relatively small, the potential cumulative benefits could be much more significant.  Policymakers, according to the team, could deliver a big happiness boost to the community by designing greener cities, since the “benefits of a marriage, for example, will be fairly localized, whereas the benefits of a park may be universal.”

You can read a summary of their paper here (http://www.ecehh.org/publication/would-you-be-happier-living-greener-urban-area), along with a very interesting short video of explanation. You can find an official abstract from Psychological Science here (http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/23/0956797612464659.abstract).
While these results are from the UK, not the US, the impact could be very similar for urban or near-urban dweller on this side of the pond. It’s a concept that we bird educators might consider as we do our work