Why Landscapes Are Beautiful: How Rural Landscapes Improve Human Wellbeing
Rural landscapes have many different meanings and purposes. They function as places for food production, as habitats for plants and animals, as places of cultural heritage and history, and as homes for people. Such multipurpose landscapes provide benefits to people and nature. Our group was part of an international team of researchers that has studied the effects of landscapes for human wellbeing in different places of Europe. On the grounds of their social-ecological research it can be stated: The surrounding nature makes people happier and healthier.
How are landscape’s benefits seen and valued in the eyes of local residents? How are peoples’ feelings and understandings about their landscapes linked to their overall wellbeing?
In times of rapid landscape change around the world, both questions are relevant points of study. While there is a wealth of scientific studies on the different services provided by natural ecosystems — such as food production, water irrigation and the prevention of soil erosion — , landscapes’ contributions to the psychological and physical health of people have to date only rarely been examined. Such human wellbeing cannot simply be measured by material indicators such as GDP, but has to be considered as multi-dimensional and context-specific, including people’s subjective perceptions.
In the frame of the EU research project AGFORWARD, scientists at twelve European universities (including Tobias Plieninger, Mario Torralba/Mariotorralbav and Maria Garcia-Martin), collaboratively addressed this issue: Conducting both face-to-face surveys and mapping exercises concerning perceived ecosystem service benefits, they sought to examine the values local people attach to their surrounding landscapes.
Fieldwork was carried out with about 2.000 local residents at 13 sites in ten countries across Europe. These predominantly agricultural, multifunctional landscapes strongly varied amongst other characteristics in size, type, land use and degree of rurality (from peri-urban to deep rural)*. The sample thus included a variety of sites — from the intensively used open farming landscapes at The Brecks, UK, via the hilly, touristic area of Zala at the Hungarian Balaton, up to the dehesa in Llanos de Trujillo, Spain.
A wealth of positive contributions
This comprehensive fieldwork resulted in a multi-faceted picture consisting of 40 different ways in which landscapes positively contribute to locals’ wellbeing — according to their own reports.
Across all landscapes examined, people most frequently viewed therapeutic wellbeing effects, such as silence, tranquility, peacefulness and relaxation as important. Another benefit frequently mentioned was that landscapes offer important opportunities for interaction among family, friends and the community. Moreover, locals strongly value the ‘nature’ and ‘scenery’ of landscapes.
However, there is a diversity across European regions in terms of how people in a specific landscape understand and value wellbeing benefits. Culturally and geographically different ideas of wellbeing obviously pre-structure people’s responses.
For instance, the accessibility of public infrastructure plays a stronger role in peri-urban landscapes in Sweden and Switzerland, while the landscape as a place of social contacts is of great importance in South-European sites. These results move beyond traditional framings of rural landscapes, which usually highlight production-oriented wellbeing outputs such as food, fibres and ecosystem processes.
Finally, the study shows that planning and management decisions should view landscapes as a starting point for understanding ‘local places’:
The diverse relations between humans and nature in rural landscapes, their structure and their meaning for the wellbeing of people should be identified and articulated to ensure sustainable landscape development.
Fagerholm, N., Martín-López, B., Torralba, M., Oteros-Rozas, E., Lechner, A. M., Bieling, C., Stahl Olafsson, A., Albert, C., Raymond, C. M., Garcia-Martin, M., Gulsrud, N., Plieninger, T. (2020): Perceived contributions of multifunctional landscapes to human well-being: Evidence from 13 European sites. People & Nature 2 (1), 217–234. Online: https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10067 .
*The FARO typology of rurality combines indicators of population density, average income and accessibility (travel time to cities). See van Eupen et al. 2012.
