Colléony Agathe, Clayton Susan, Shwartz Assaf
Human and Biodiversity Research Lab, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
Department of Psychology, College of Wooster, 1189 Beall Avenue, Wooster, OH 44691, United States.
Biol Conserv. 2022 Apr;268:109520. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109520. Epub 2022 Mar 16.
Nature provides a myriad of intangible and non-material services to people. However, urbanites are increasingly disconnected from the natural world. The consequences of this progressive disconnection from nature remain difficult to measure as this process is slow and long-term monitoring or large-scale manipulation on nature experiences are scarce. Measures to contain the spread of the recent COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., lockdowns) have potentially reduced or even suppressed nature experiences in cities. This situation provided an opportunity for conducting a longitudinal study that can serve as a sort of natural experiment to quantify the effects of nature deprivation on individuals' health, well-being and relationship to nature. We collected data on these variables from the same individuals inhabiting a large metropolis (Tel Aviv, Israel) twice, in 2018 (before) and during the lockdown in 2020. Our results confirmed that frequency, duration and quality of nature interactions dropped during the lockdown, while environmental attitudes and affinity towards nature remained similar. This was particularly true for people living in the least green neighborhoods, where a significant decrease in personal and social well-being was also found. Finally, affinity towards nature influenced well-being through nature experiences in 2018. The mediation effect was not significant in 2020, probably due to the decrease in nature experiences during the lockdown, but the direct relationship between affinity towards nature and well-being remained strong. These results provide insights into the means required to align the public health and conservation agendas to safeguard urbanites' health and well-being during a pandemic and mitigate the biodiversity crisis.
大自然为人类提供了无数无形的、非物质的服务。然而，城市居民与自然世界的联系却日益疏远。由于这一过程缓慢，且缺乏对自然体验的长期监测或大规模操控，这种与自然逐渐脱节的后果仍难以衡量。遏制近期新冠疫情传播的措施（即封锁）可能减少甚至抑制了城市居民的自然体验。这种情况为开展一项纵向研究提供了契机，该研究可作为一种自然实验，用以量化自然剥夺对个人健康、幸福感以及与自然关系的影响。我们于2018年（之前）和2020年封锁期间，对居住在一个大都市（以色列特拉维夫）的同一批人进行了两次关于这些变量的数据收集。我们的研究结果证实，封锁期间与自然互动的频率、时长和质量均有所下降，而环境态度和对自然的亲近感则保持相似。对于居住在绿化程度最低社区的居民而言尤其如此，他们的个人和社会幸福感也出现了显著下降。最后，2018年对自然的亲近感通过自然体验影响了幸福感。2020年这种中介效应并不显著，可能是由于封锁期间自然体验减少所致，但对自然的亲近感与幸福感之间的直接关系依然紧密。这些结果为在疫情期间协调公共卫生与保护议程以保障城市居民的健康和幸福感、缓解生物多样性危机所需的手段提供了见解。
