European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School, University of Exeter, c/o Knowledge Spa, RCHT, Truro, Cornwall TR1 3HD, UK.
Urban & Environmental Psychology Group, University of Vienna, Austria.
Health Promot Int. 2021 Aug 30;36(4):1126-1139. doi: 10.1093/heapro/daaa150.
Natural environments can be used to promote health through facilitating recreational walking. However, efforts to encourage this often neglect messages identified in psychological research that are effective at influencing intentions to walk. This is despite the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence stating that promotional efforts should utilize theoretical frameworks of behaviour change and be targeted towards less active adults. As an illustrative example, this experiment compared a prototypical recreational walking brochure with an "enhanced" version including such persuasive messages on people's intentions to walk for recreation in natural environments. The enhanced brochure heightened intentions for inexperienced recreational walkers through our hypothesized mechanisms, but appeared to dissuade already-experienced walkers. Optimal messaging strategies in recreational walking brochures require tailoring to more and less active readerships. Guidelines are provided for authors of recreational walking brochures, though the principles and techniques could easily be extended to other means of outdoor walking promotion.
自然环境可以通过促进休闲散步来促进健康。然而，鼓励这种行为的努力往往忽略了心理学研究中发现的、对影响步行意愿非常有效的信息。尽管国家健康与保健卓越研究所表示，宣传工作应该利用行为改变的理论框架，并针对不那么活跃的成年人。作为一个说明性的例子，这个实验比较了一个典型的休闲散步小册子和一个“增强”版本，包括在自然环境中进行休闲散步的意图的这种有说服力的信息。增强的小册子通过我们假设的机制提高了无经验休闲步行者的意愿，但似乎劝阻了已经有经验的步行者。休闲散步小册子中的最佳信息策略需要根据更活跃和不活跃的读者进行调整。为休闲散步小册子的作者提供了指导方针，尽管这些原则和技术可以很容易地扩展到其他户外步行推广方式。
