Activities such as walking, jogging or exercising can enable people to spend time in natural environments (e.g., forests, coasts, urban green spaces, etc.), providing even greater health benefits than those related to physical activity alone. Any physical activity taking place in natural environments has been defined as green exercise, and in the last decade studies have demonstrated the additional health benefits associated with this form of physical activity. For example, evidence shows that, compared with physical activity taking place indoors or in other built environments, green exercise can elicit stress reduction and positive psychological states, and provide long-lasting benefits in terms of physical and mental health. Furthermore, it has been argued that the positive psychophysiological effects of green exercise could lead to greater physical activity adherence. Despite the growing body of evidence regarding the health effects of green exercise, to date, little is known about the extent to which green exercise is a common form of physical activity in the general population, and whether it is a form of physical activity accessible to all. Moreover, little is known about the motivational processes that underly the participation in green exercise.
This project aims to address the following purposes:
(a) Provide a comprehensive overview of the “green exercise phenomenon” in Norway by examining to what extent weekly green exercise, in different forms, is a common source of weekly physical activity among adult Norwegians;
(b) Evaluate the significance of green exercise to health equity, examining the distribution of weekly green exercise and possible factors that promote GE across different social groups.
(c) Investigate the extent to which proximate natural environments is associated with high levels of physical activity, and what are the intra- and inter-individual factors account for this association;
(d) Examine the motivations that drive people to engage in green exercise, and compare them with the motivations for other forms of leisute-time physical activity, such as exercising in the gym and participating in organized sports.