Landscape exposure and exercising for health: exposure to natural versus urban landscapes promotes walking for health.

OBJECTIVE

A common tendency among humans is the devaluation of remote, larger benefits in favour of immediate, smaller gains, a phenomenon known as temporal discounting. Exercising for health necessitates focusing on long-term health benefits while minimising perceived obstacles. Recent studies have demonstrated that experiencing nature may reduce the discounting tendency. We conducted a behavioural experiment to investigate whether exposure to natural environments could decrease temporal discounting, thereby enhancing the inclination to walk for health.

METHOD

In total, 140 participants were randomly assigned to view images of either natural or urban landscapes. They completed a measure of discounting and participated in a pedometer-based task. In this task, the selection of a meeting point at a greater or lesser distance, along with the additional distance walked, were used as indicators of health-oriented walking behaviour.

RESULTS

Participants exposed to natural settings were more likely to choose a distant meeting point for returning the pedometer and engaged in greater additional walking than those exposed to urban settings. Temporal discounting played a mediating role in these effects.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings offer an explanation for the reduced propensity towards health-related exercise among urban residents, and provide a novel strategy for promoting exercise motivation in contemporary lifestyles.