The Mappiness app builds on the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), where participants are asked to use a diary to record details on their wellbeing and current situation at prespecified times of the day 18, 19. First, MacKerron and Mourato 3 present Mappiness, an Apple iOS smartphone app which allows users throughout the UK to track their happiness. Two recent studies are of particular relevance. Some evidence of a link between viewing art and improved mood has also been reported, for example in patients with Alzheimer’s disease 15.Ĭould the aesthetics of an environment therefore have a crucial association with everyday happiness that studies to date have not been able to capture? Recent methodological advances drawing on data from mobile phones and Internet activity have opened up new avenues for measuring human behaviour and experience which may allow us to provide an answer to this longstanding question 16, 17. Furthermore, while showing photographs to participants in a laboratory setting has provided the key previous opportunity to gain insight into the aesthetics of the scene viewed, it could also be argued that emotional reactions to environmental scenes in everyday life may differ. 12, who split a set of 30 photographs into pleasant and unpleasant scenes on the basis of feedback from a panel of 50 people, photos or views in these studies were rated for attractiveness by the same person reporting their mood or wellbeing, such that aesthetic and emotional responses to an image may be difficult to disentangle. However, other than in the study reported by Pretty et al.

An association has also been reported between satisfaction with the view from a workplace window and general wellbeing 14. Intriguingly, results from studies in which participants viewed sequences of images provide initial indications that photographs of environments considered more attractive are associated with improved mood 11, 12, 13. However, data on the aesthetics of the environments experienced by the participants have not been available for analysis. A new line of studies has asked participants to gather photographs of the environments they experience 10. In survey based studies of large numbers of participants, researchers have been able to draw on national scale data on the environment derived from remote imaging, such as data on whether an area is natural or built-up 3, or how much green space is present in the local environment 4, 5. In experimental settings where researchers have directly exposed participants to different environments, environments have been classified as either urban or natural 1, 2. Similarly, researchers have had limited access to large-scale data on the beauty of the environment.

Such approaches have not enabled researchers to measure the fluctuations in happiness that may occur as individuals experience a range of environments during their everyday life. Where major survey initiatives have facilitated the collection of subjective wellbeing data for thousands of participants, questionnaires have usually been administered at most once a year 4, 5.

In experimental situations, this constraint has normally resulted in only one or two measurements being taken, for a restricted number of participants 1, 2, 9. Limitations in measuring subjective wellbeing have largely been due to the resources required to administer a survey to establish how happy an individual is. However, to date, researchers in this domain have had to contend with considerable limitations in measuring happiness levels as humans experience different environments 8 as well as in measuring the aesthetics of those different environments. Experimental and survey based studies have produced a sequence of results suggesting that natural habitats are associated with greater happiness, a result usually explained with reference to the ‘biophilia hypothesis’, which suggests that evolutionary pressures have led to a human preference for a connection with nature 7. The relationship between the environment and subjective wellbeing has been the subject of an extensive scientific literature 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 as well as parliamentary briefings 6. What characteristics of such environments might be driving such an effect? Is it simply the overwhelming presence of nature, or might the beauty of these environments be crucial? If aesthetics play a key role, might this apply in built-up environments too, where policy makers, urban planners, property developers, and architects can affect the design of the places we experience, and potentially therefore our everyday happiness? Areas of great natural beauty have long been considered to be locations in which one might hope to feel a greater sense of happiness.

Nature scenery download