S09 - Session O6 - Experience of nature while walking in an urban park: joint approaches in psychology and landscape science

Authors: Pauline Laïlle *, Bastien Vajou, Nathan Béziau, Alice Meyer-Grandbastien, Dr. Benoît Fromage, Gilles Galopin

Urban green spaces' benefits on city dwellers' mental health are now well established, in particular on stress, anxiety and mood. These benefits can be influenced by landscape components as well as participants' individual characteristics. To explore further this knowledge, we test an interdisciplinary approach to identify which characteristics of an urban park generate well-being and induce a state of mindfulness. Through an in situ experiment, we analyse the experience of nature of 40 participants during a twenty-minutes walk in two different landscapes in an urban park located in Angers, France. An interdisciplinary approach relying on landscape sciences and psychology is implemented. A landscape analysis offers an objective assessment of the two landscapes. Participants' anxiety level, positive and negative affects, connectedness to nature and passed nature experiences are assessed through psychometric scales. Additionally, an interview is conducted to access each participant's experience of nature. Verbal productions are submitted to thematic and lexical analysis to investigate to which extent cognitive and emotional representations are affected by specific landscape features. Results show that landscape characteristics and participant's well-being are indeed connected. In particular, well-being is associated to specific landscape features and the presence of plants and animals. The importance of luminosity is underlined. Moreover, the experience of nature generates all the indications of a state of mindfulness in participants. While considering that each experience of nature is individual and that each landscape answers to a diversity of uses, the interdisciplinary model tested here allowed us to identify specific landscape features that generate a state of well-being and mindfulness. This approach would need to be validated through replication but proves promising to specify the relation between green spaces and human health.