A new study has highlighted the shared enjoyment of experiencing time in nature by surveying visitors to national parks and forests in four different countries, finding that visitors’ all five senses were activated in positive ways by their surroundings.

Led by Professor Emeritus Ralf Buckley from the School of Environment and Science with co-authors Dr. Mary-Ann Cooper from Andrés Bello University and Dr. Linsheng Zhong from the Chinese Academy of Science, the study surveyed 100 on-site participants in Australia, 100 in Chile, and >500 in China, and compiled 1,000 relevant social media posts from Japan.

The study“Principal sensory experiences of forest visitors in four countries, for evidence-based nature therapy,” has been published in People and Nature,

The key sensory experiences were universal: sights of plant shapes and colors; sounds of birdsong, running water, and rustling leaves; smells of flowers, trees, and earth; taste and temperature of clean air and water; and touch of bark and rocks.

Professor Buckley said these fine-grained but widespread experiences were the principal finding from the surveys.

“Spending time in nature is good for our mental health, that’s the idea behind nature therapies,” Professor Buckley said.

“At a national scale, they might save a lot of money. But your health insurance won’t yet pay for them, because they need prescriptable products with certified providers and charge codes.

“So, researchers are trying to design nature therapy courses with all the costs and components packaged together efficiently, like a course of occupational therapy.

“But to do that, we need to know what it is about the experience of time in nature that makes us less stressed? That’s what this study did; we asked what specific sensory experiences in nature people found important and memorable, and how that might differ between different people in Australia, Japan, Chile and China.”

These sensory experiences were at a scale that was broad enough to apply for prescriptive nature therapies in any forested region, but fine enough to be used in future quantitative research to test therapeutic designs, doses and durations.

Professor Buckley said this distinguished them from prior research that was either too broad or too fine in scale for practical therapy design.

“We know from earlier research that people see their emotions are an important step between senses and well-being, but we don’t yet know whether they are essential,” he said.

“Such features may include activity, group size, and guiding, but each of these remains to be tested.”