How Much Nature Exposure is Enough?

Are you one of those people who loves to go for walks in natural spaces with headphones on, listening to podcasts or audiobooks? Is your desktop background a beautiful mountain scene that you occasionally glimpse when your Chrome or Safari window is minimized? Do you enjoy watching Planet Earth but feel the need to check your phone every five minutes to make sure you didn’t miss an important notification?

If so, you’re not alone. I am personally guilty of doing each of these with at least some regularity, and I research the benefits of interacting with nature! From some of the work I’ve done and, more importantly, from decades of work in environmental psychology and related fields, we know that the behaviors I described above are not optimal if you’re trying to maximize the psychological benefits of exposure to natural spaces. But this begs the question, “how much nature is enough nature?” Or put differently, how immersed in an environment do you have to be for it to have a positive impact on you?

For methodological and logistic reasons that aren’t super interesting to non-academics, research in environmental psychology uses a variety of means to expose people to different places. Sometimes researchers present pictures on a monitor or laptop. Sometimes, it’s videos, virtual reality, a walk through a city park, or a walk through a forest preserve. Sometimes it’s even taking individuals onto a wilderness retreat (a commendable feat)!

We’ve learned that, unsurprisingly, the more immersive the experience, the larger the benefit on cognitive functioning, emotional states, and stress responses. This is sometimes referred to as a dose-response effect of nature exposure. We can think of the “dose” of nature as reflecting the amount of time spent in that space, the frequency or regularity with which we spend in natural areas, or how immersive the experience is, how present we are, how many sensory modalities (i.e., vision, hearing, smelling) are involved.

What is interesting to note is that while, as a rule, more immersive experiences are better, this doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from nature in more subtle, even artificial ways. This appears to be particularly true when it comes to the emotional benefits of nature. Very short-term exposures to nature scenes (around three minutes) can significantly enhance positive emotions (Beute & de Kort, 2014).

But not all scenes are created equal. A study I published a few years back (Meidenbauer et al., 2020) showed that what really seemed to matter for the emotional benefits was that you liked the pictures you were being shown, irrespective of whether it was a beautiful natural vista, a city skyline at night, or some really cute puppies. (Yes, I’m serious, I had people look at puppies and kittens for science). We found that the effects were considerably smaller when participants viewed ugly nature scenes versus beautiful ones.

This means you actually can get at least a short-term mood boost by looking at your desktop background for a few minutes, assuming it's a beautiful scene or a strongly liked picture. (You might need to remove all those annoying desktop icons, though!)

The cognitive benefits seem considerably stronger when individuals interact with real, immersive natural environments. There are a few different theories of why nature interactions can benefit our cognition - some have to do with reducing your stress response and freeing up cognitive bandwidth (Ulrich et al., 1991).

Others relate to the idea that walking through natural environments requires less effortful attention than urban environments, and there are elements of nature that gently engage our senses, freeing up our minds to wander and reflect (Kaplan, 1995). There are still others, but it does appear that the more immersive the environment and the fewer things you have to attend to (cars, other pedestrians, your phone’s persistent notifications), the greater the cognitive benefits.

That said, if you don’t have access to an immersive wilderness, watching a nature documentary with your phone on silent may still improve your ability to focus afterward. It also means that if you’re able to take a nature walk on your lunch break and want to be able to concentrate when you get back to work, you may want to ditch the podcasts and let your mind follow the bird songs and rustling leaves.

A final feature worth noting is that your current mental state will also likely affect if and how much nature will benefit you psychologically. Nature interventions are particularly helpful for boosting cognition and emotion if you’re already fatigued, in a bad mood, or dealing with depression symptoms (Berman et al., 2012). People tend to underestimate the impact nature exposures might have on them (Nisbet & Zelenski, 2011). The next time you’re tired or grumpy, finding nature wherever you can and trying to eliminate unnecessary distractions may benefit you more than you think.

I have begun taking the colossal step of leaving my phone and earbuds at home when I go on a walk. I hate to admit it, but it does indeed seem like my fellow scientists are on to something.