Quantifying the Impact of Scenic Environments on Health
Seresinhe, C. I., Preis, T., & Moat, H. S. (2015) Scientific Reports, 5, 16899.
Our results provide evidence in line with the striking hypothesis that the aesthetics of the environment may have quantifiable consequences for our wellbeing.
Does living in picturesque areas make you feel healthier? Urban planners and think tanks have puzzled over this question for years, but have been held back by a lack of data on the beauty of our environment.
We use over 1 millions votes from over 212,000 images from the mySociety project “Scenic-or-Not to answer this age-old question. A comparison to data from the Census for England and Wales shows that people living in more scenic environments report better health, even when taking variables such as income, greenspace, and pollution into account.
These results suggest that the beauty of our everyday environment might have more practical importance than previously realised.