Researchers are finding what may give us a bigger boost to happiness!

A team from the University of Vermont has found that the larger a city park, the happier you are, according to a new study in Urban Nature.

They measured the happiness effects of city parks in the 25 largest US cities, and found that the benefit of urban nature to users was roughly equivalent to the mood lift people experience on holidays such as Thanksgiving or New Year’s.

To reach their conclusions, the scientists used massive amounts of data from social media in order to determine which moods enhance the benefits of urban nature.

“These new findings underscore how important nature is to our mental and physical health,” lead author Taylor Ricketts said, adding that “the results are timely given our increasing reliance on urban landscapes during the Covid pandemic.”
The team said urban nature must be protected, expanded and made available as much as possible, as it is nature’s only resource for millions of people.

The team relied on work they did in San Francisco, using Twitter posts and geolocation data to determine the happiness benefit people get from nature.

They expanded the work to focus on the 25 most populous US cities, and included 1.5 million Twitter posts measuring online sentiment.

The researchers found a strong happiness benefit from city parks, which were present in all seasons, months, weeks, days and times of day. They were expecting an increase in weekends and summer holidays, so they were provided with a view that it was consistent throughout the year.

“We understand the irony of using Twitter and technology to measure happiness from nature,” says lead author and PhD student Aaron Schwartz. “But our goal is to use technology for the greater good – to better understand nature’s impact on humans, which has so far been difficult to quantify in large numbers.” .

One explanation suggested by the researchers is that larger parks provide greater opportunities for mental recovery and detachment from city environments.

The results were published in the journal PLOS ONE.