Happiness is Greater in More Scenic Locations

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2019 Mar 16

PMID 30872776

Citations 13

Authors

Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe

Tobias Preis

George MacKerron

Helen Susannah Moat

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Does spending time in beautiful settings boost people's happiness? The answer to this question has long remained elusive due to a paucity of large-scale data on environmental aesthetics and individual happiness. Here, we draw on two novel datasets: first, individual happiness data from the smartphone app, Mappiness, and second, crowdsourced ratings of the "scenicness" of photographs taken across England from the online game Scenic-Or-Not. We find that individuals are happier in more scenic locations, even when we account for a range of factors such as the activity the individual was engaged in at the time, weather conditions and the income of local inhabitants. Crucially, this relationship holds not only in natural environments, but in built-up areas too, even after controlling for the presence of green space. Our results provide evidence that the aesthetics of the environments that policymakers choose to build or demolish may have consequences for our everyday wellbeing.

Citing Articles

Evaluating the impact of added greenery on perceived factors of an urban environment in virtual reality.

Bar-Ad R, Vigo M, Caruso G, Quboa Q, Pinto N PLoS One. 2025; 20(2):e0316195.

PMID: 39913470 PMC: 11801589. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0316195.

Prompt-guided and multimodal landscape scenicness assessments with vision-language models.

Levering A, Marcos D, Jacobs N, Tuia D PLoS One. 2024; 19(9):e0307083.

PMID: 39348404 PMC: 11441650. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0307083.

Influence of the perceptions of amenities on consumer emotions in urban consumption spaces.

Tan J, Li Y PLoS One. 2024; 19(5):e0304203.

PMID: 38809932 PMC: 11135775. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0304203.

The attitude towards the forest and satisfaction with life of Polish students.

Koprowicz A, Korzeniewicz R, Pusz W, Baranowska M PLoS One. 2024; 19(4):e0302247.

PMID: 38625979 PMC: 11020966. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302247.

Assessing landscape aesthetic values: Do clouds in photographs influence people's preferences?.

Tasser E, Lavdas A, Schirpke U PLoS One. 2023; 18(7):e0288424.

PMID: 37506121 PMC: 10381034. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288424.

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