Previous research into the wellbeing benefits of nature has primarily focused on restoration – essentially a dose of nature will do you good when you’re fatigued. This is great, but nature is much more than a pill to pop, there are much deeper connections and a story to tell how nature keeps us well, rather than restores us. Restoration-based accounts do not explain all the well-being benefits derived from nature.

The role of nature in the regulation of emotions has been overlooked despite evidence that people seek out nature to manage their moods.  My previous work between 2016 and 2019 on nature and emotion regulation first considered how a model of affect regulation, the three circle model of emotion, provides a framework to explain the mental well-being benefits of nature, illustrated below. This was followed by a study that showed that emotional regulation was involved in the relationship between nature connectedness and wellbeing, showing that people who are less connected with nature experience greater difficulty in emotion regulation. The final paper summarised this work and showed how nature helps manage our emotions for wellbeing.

In the last nine months three more papers on nature, connectedness and emotional regulation have been published. The first considers nature contact for emotion regulation and explored the roles of nature connectedness and engagement with nature’s beauty in urban young adults. It found that nature connectedness mediated the link between nature contact and emotional regulation. Further, engagement with natural beauty moderated the link between nature contact and emotional regulation.

The second paper looked at the role of emotion regulation in the links between nature contact, emotional ill-being and well-being. Again, effective emotion regulation was involved in the relationship between nature contact and better wellbeing, but for some wellbeing outcomes time in nature provided diminishing returns. This paper didn’t consider nature connectedness, but the third did.

The final paper was a review of the role of nature in emotion regulation. Their review of 27 studies found that nature exposure has a positive impact on emotion regulation in general and on specific emotion regulation strategies, such as enhancing the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies  such as mindfulness and decreasing rumination and worry. The benefits of nature connectedness were mediated by emotion regulation processes. This is illustrated in the diagram above.

It’s increasingly clear that the benefits of nature contact and connection can be explained by changes in emotion regulation. As such, frameworks explaining how nature benefits wellbeing need to be updated to include emotion regulation in addition to restoration. Nature helps manage our moods and keep us well.

Richardson, M., McEwan, K., Maratos, F., & Sheffield, D. (2016). Joy and calm: How an evolutionary functional model of affect regulation informs positive emotions in nature. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2, 308-320.

Richardson, M., & McEwan, K. (2018). 30 days wild and the relationships between engagement with nature’s beauty, nature connectedness and well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1500.

Richardson, M. (2019). Beyond restoration: considering emotion regulation in natural well-being. Ecopsychology, 11(2), 123-129.

Gu, X., Zheng, H., & Tse, C. S. (2023). Contact with nature for emotion regulation: the roles of nature connectedness and beauty engagement in urban young adults. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 21377.

Vitale, V., & Bonaiuto, M. (2024). The role of nature in emotion regulation processes: An evidence-based rapid review. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 102325.

Bratman, G. N., Mehta, A., Olvera-Alvarez, H., Spink, K. M., Levy, C., White, M. P., … & Gross, J. J. (2024). Associations of nature contact with emotional ill-being and well-being: the role of emotion regulation. Cognition and Emotion, 1-20.