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Well-being from nature exposure depends on socio-environmental contexts in Paraguay

Nature Cities volume 1, pages 335–345 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Access to urban nature is an important contributor to human health. Yet evidence of nature’s benefits comes overwhelmingly from the Global North and might not directly translate to cities in the Global South. Here, using survey data from 1,119 residents of Asunción, Paraguay, we found that the context and intentionality of nature exposure and the function of nature in the individual’s life collectively shape nature’s effect on mental health and well-being. While a stronger nature connection was positively associated with life satisfaction, for individuals living in informal settlements, higher levels of greenness near their home were associated with lower life satisfaction. Alternatively, like their Global North counterparts, for residents in formal parts of the city, nature exposure was positively associated with well-being. Our findings suggest that well-being benefits from everyday greenness depend on the socio-environmental context but connection to nature that motivates positive nature seeking can be beneficial for well-being among the urban poor.

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Fig. 1: Stepwise model selection process.
Fig. 2: Interaction effects.
Fig. 3: Informal settlements in study area.

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Data availability

Data supporting the findings in this study are available in the online depository figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25321915.v1 (ref. 81).

Code availability

The code that supports the findings of this study is available in the online depository figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25358098.v2 (ref. 82).

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support for this research by the Australia RTP Scholarship granted to V.B.-E.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of the Environment, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Violeta Berdejo-Espinola & Richard A. Fuller

  2. School of Social Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Renee Zahnow

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  1. Violeta Berdejo-Espinola
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Contributions

V.B.-E., R.Z. and R.A.F. conceptualized the study. V.B.-E. carried out formal analysis. V.B.-E. and R.Z. were responsible for the methodology. V.B.-E. and R.Z. wrote the original draft. V.B.-E., R.Z. and R.A.F. reviewed and edited the article.

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Correspondence to Violeta Berdejo-Espinola.

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Nature Cities thanks Bin Chen, Francisco J. Escobedo and Heidi Tuhkanen for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Abstract in Spanish and Portuguese, Supplementary Tables 1–7, Figs. 1 and 2, definitions and the survey used to collect sociodemographic data.

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Berdejo-Espinola, V., Fuller, R.A. & Zahnow, R. Well-being from nature exposure depends on socio-environmental contexts in Paraguay. Nat Cities 1, 335–345 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00058-0

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