Two people sit in the same city park for half an hour. One notices birds, shade and a change in air; the other is preoccupied with a difficult call and barely registers the setting. The visit is equal on a clock, but the experience may not be equal. That possibility motivates a 2024 study by Chia-chen Chang and colleagues about whether connection to nature changes the relationship between visiting green space and mental health. The study offers a useful question, but its title’s word benefits needs careful reading: the data are observational, so a causal benefit was not directly established.
The authors surveyed adults in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia, in April and May 2021. They examined reported visits to public green space, private-yard use, self-reported mental health and a measure of connection to nature. They found that more frequent public green-space visits were associated with lower stress and anxiety particularly among respondents with stronger connection to nature. Among those in the lowest connection quartile, those associations were less clear. This is a pattern within two urban samples at a particular moment, not a verdict that some people are incapable of benefiting from nature.
What the study actually measured
The paper reports an online cross-sectional survey of 1,050 participants in Brisbane and 1,034 in Sydney, for 2,084 respondents in total. A cross-sectional survey captures responses in one period; it does not follow people forward to determine whether a visit caused later improvement. Participants reported public green-space use, connection to nature and symptoms such as stress, anxiety and depression. The authors also used an open-ended question about reasons for visiting and examined private yards as another form of nature contact.
“Connection to nature” is a questionnaire construct, not a direct reading of a person’s relationship with a particular park. It includes how familiar a person feels with nature and their desire to be in it, as operationalized in this study. The scores can be useful for comparison, but they do not reveal every ecological knowledge, sensory experience, cultural practice or physical constraint that shapes a visit. A low score should not be turned into a deficit label for the respondent.
Likewise, “visiting public green space” combines potentially different experiences. A short walk to catch a bus, a quiet hour by water, a family gathering, exercise and wildlife observation can all occur in a green setting. The survey recorded visit patterns, but the authors note that it did not characterize the activities people actually performed in the spaces. If connection predicts a different way of engaging with a park, activity could mediate the observed association. If activity differs because of health, time or access, it could also confound it.
The timing matters. The survey was conducted about a year after the first Covid-19 lockdowns. Stressors, access rules and habits during that period may not resemble those of a later year. Brisbane and Sydney also differ in urban form, climate and living costs. A result in these samples should motivate study elsewhere, not be treated as a universal response curve for everyone who encounters green space.
The central finding and its narrowest safe reading
In the authors’ analyses, people who reported more frequent public green-space visits tended on average to report lower stress, anxiety and depression. The association varied with connection to nature. In the paper’s visualization, respondents in the lowest quarter of nature-connection scores showed little reduction in stress and anxiety across visit frequency, whereas the relationship was more pronounced among those with stronger connection. The statistical models used actual connection scores rather than quartile categories. This is the paper’s central moderation finding.
Depression needs a separate sentence. The authors report a trend in the same general direction, but the interaction between public visits and connection to nature was not statistically significant for depression. It would overstate the evidence to say the study demonstrated that low connection blocks a depression benefit. The stress and anxiety associations are the firmer claims within this analysis; all remain observational.
The phrase “lower mental health benefits” compresses several inferences. To establish a benefit from a visit, we would want to compare what happened to the same or comparable people after different exposures, with baseline health measured and other changes controlled. To establish that connection modifies that causal benefit, we would need to test the interaction in such a design. The 2024 paper instead estimates associations in self-reported data collected at one time. It is valuable for hypothesis generation and urban-health questions, but it cannot resolve direction of cause.
People with better mental health may have more energy or opportunity to visit parks. People who already enjoy nature may choose higher-quality parks or engage in different activities. Stress may narrow attention, reduce the desire to go outside or change how a person answers a connection questionnaire. Income, disability, transport, weather, safety and time all shape access and mental health. Statistical adjustment can help with measured differences, but it cannot eliminate every unmeasured alternative.
What the open-ended responses add
Chang and colleagues also examined what respondents said about why they visited green space. Those with lower nature-connection scores tended to use nature-related words less often in their open answers. That pattern is consistent with the idea that people attend to different aspects of a park. It is not a direct record of what someone noticed during a visit, and it cannot establish why their mental health scores differed. A person may visit primarily to meet a friend and still benefit from trees, shade, movement or social connection.
Open responses can be particularly useful because they remind researchers that a park is not one treatment delivered uniformly to all visitors. It is a setting for multiple activities and meanings. But text coding has its own limits. The wording of the prompt, language, available time and writing style affect which words appear. A survey answer about purpose should be read as one indication of reported intention, not as a complete map of experience.
A follow-up study could ask participants about attention, activity, companionship and perceived safety during visits, then measure mood before and after visits across multiple days. It could compare different kinds of spaces and include people who find parks stressful or inaccessible. This is an Institute proposal for stronger research, not a procedure used in the 2024 study. It would help separate contact, connection, activity and context.
Why private yards complicate the story
The paper also considers private-yard use. This matters because access to a yard is uneven and linked to housing, income and life stage. A visit to a private outdoor space may involve quiet, gardening, children, work or refuge from a crowded home. Yard frequency and duration can tell different stories. In a related 2023 analysis of the same Australian survey context, more frequent yard use correlated with better self-reported mental health, while longer recent yard visits correlated with higher symptom scores. The authors cautioned that people under greater strain might seek longer visits as a response to distress.
That apparent reversal is a useful warning against simple dose slogans. More time in a green space does not always signal more improvement; it may signal need, opportunity or a different activity. The same person could go outside longer because they feel unwell and later feel somewhat better, yet a cross-sectional snapshot might still show a positive correlation between time outdoors and symptoms. Longitudinal and experimental designs are needed to untangle such sequences.
Yards also make an equity issue visible. If a public-health recommendation assumes a private yard, it excludes many apartment dwellers. If a city builds parks but the paths are unsafe, transit is poor or entrance feels unwelcoming, availability on a map may not translate into usable access. Connection to nature might develop through repeated welcoming experiences, but those experiences depend partly on the design and governance of places. Individual connection cannot be detached from opportunity.
How this fits the wider evidence
Bratman and colleagues’ ecosystem-service framework describes multiple possible pathways linking nature experience with mental health, including psychological processes, social context and environmental conditions. It is a conceptual synthesis, not evidence that one pathway explains the Chang study. Its value here is to keep the mechanism open. A park can offer restoration, movement, companionship, sensory interest or respite from heat and noise, and different visitors may encounter different combinations.
Capaldi and colleagues’ meta-analysis found a modest positive association between nature connectedness and happiness across studies. That result makes it plausible that connection and wellbeing travel together, but a pooled correlation cannot show whether connection causes happiness, happier people feel more connected, or shared circumstances contribute to both. The 2024 survey adds a moderation question to that landscape. It does not settle the causal ordering.
Nature-based outdoor-activity reviews report benefits for some mental-health and wellbeing outcomes across intervention studies, while noting heterogeneity and the difficulty of identifying active ingredients. The study types should not be blended into a single claim. A randomized program may support an effect of that program under its conditions; a cross-sectional park-use survey describes associations in a population. Neither tells us that all nature contact is equivalent or that connection is a necessary precondition for every benefit.
The wider evidence also suggests that the content of a place matters. Trees, biodiversity, shade, paths, benches, traffic noise, safety and social welcome can alter the experience. A person may be connected to nature but have no nearby safe space; another may be less explicitly connected but still find relief from heat or gain exercise on a shaded route. The 2024 finding should widen design questions rather than narrow them to one questionnaire score.
What a better test would need
A stronger design could follow the same participants over time, including periods with more and less green-space contact. Baseline mental health, life events, physical activity and access would be measured. Repeated brief reports could capture mood before and after visits, while location and activity data would describe the visit more precisely. That would still require care: asking too often may change behavior, location tracking raises privacy concerns, and unmeasured stressors can shift over time.
A randomized intervention could offer supported access to specified nature experiences and compare credible alternatives. It should measure whether connection changes before the outcome and whether that change predicts response. But a park cannot be blinded like a pill, and assigning visits does not guarantee the same experience for everyone. A study could also test whether improving access and comfort changes both engagement and mental health. The design should ask whether low connection is a cause, a marker or a consequence.
Qualitative work would add questions that a scale may miss. What does “nature” mean to different participants? Some may connect through gardening, fishing, urban birds, local waterways or cultural relationships to land. Others may avoid a park after harassment, allergies, mobility barriers or traumatic experiences. A city should not assume that one standardized invitation speaks to every resident. The research can be rigorous while making room for these differences.
What the evidence does not show
The 2024 study does not prove that visiting green space caused lower stress or anxiety. It does not prove that raising a person’s nature-connection score would increase a causal treatment effect. Its depression interaction was not statistically significant, and the paper should not be cited as showing that low connection prevents a depression benefit. The findings are associations from self-reports in two Australian cities at one time.
It also does not show that people with low connection should be excluded from nature programs or that they are doing nature “wrong.” Low connection may reflect limited access, cultural mismatch, life stage, distress or the particular questions used. The study did not directly observe attention during visits or determine which activities produced which outcomes. It cannot rank a quiet park visit against a social, artistic or clinical support for an individual person.
Nor does it establish a universal prescription for time outdoors. Different spaces, seasons, bodies and social conditions matter. A meaningful policy response would consider safe and equitable access, and would evaluate whether an intervention actually helps the people it intends to serve. The study’s most useful contribution is a research question about variation, not a universal rule about who can benefit.
From finding to practice
For a city planner, the finding invites attention to more than acreage. Are green spaces reachable, safe, shaded, cared for and welcoming? Can residents engage through different activities, including rest, movement, learning and social contact? For a researcher, it invites preregistered tests of connection as a moderator, with depression analyzed separately and causal claims matched to design. For an individual, it offers curiosity about how a place is experienced, without turning a survey result into self-blame.
In the opening park scene, the two visitors’ experiences may differ. They may also be alike in ways the story misses: both may benefit from cooler air or gentle movement, or neither may feel better that day. The 2024 survey cannot tell us what happened in either person’s afternoon. It tells us that reported connection and reported public green-space use interacted in the study’s stress and anxiety analyses. That is specific enough to inform a next question and limited enough to leave people room to be more than a score.
The Learning Hub’s ecological lens begins there. Human wellbeing and living places meet through access, perception, activity, history and institutions. Careful evidence can help design better opportunities for that meeting. It should not reduce a complex relation to the instruction to simply go outside and feel connected.
Research references
- Chang, C.-c., Lin, B. B., Feng, X., et al. (2024). A lower connection to nature is related to lower mental health benefits from nature contact. Scientific Reports, 14, 6705. View source
- Lin, B. B., Chang, C.-c., Astell-Burt, T., et al. (2023). Nature experience from yards provide an important space for mental health during Covid-19. npj Urban Sustainability, 3, 14. View source
- Bratman, G. N., Anderson, C. B., Berman, M. G., et al. (2019). Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective. Science Advances, 5(7), eaax0903. View source
- Capaldi, C. A., Dopko, R. L., & Zelenski, J. M. (2014). The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 976. View source
- Coventry, P. A., Brown, J. E., Pervin, J., et al. (2021). Nature-based outdoor activities for mental and physical health: Systematic review and meta-analysis. SSM – Population Health, 16, 100934. View source