On a weekday afternoon, someone pauses on a bench overlooking a neighbourhood park. A teenager walks home along a canal. An elderly resident waters plants in a shared courtyard.
These moments may seem small, almost invisible in the flow of everyday life. Yet across Europe, thousands of similar experiences are now helping us better understand how nature shapes mental wellbeing, and whether access to it is truly equitable.
This is the focus of Work Package 4 – The role of Nature in-everyday-life and nature-based promotion, led by Dr Silvio Caputo together with Dr Richard Belcher, Dr Eirini Gallou,(University of Kent) and GreenME consortium partners across the study areas.
A Pan-European effort rooted in local communities
Between May and November 2025, WP4 conducted an ambitious survey across 9 study areas in 7 countries, exploring the relationship between everyday exposure to nature, mental health, and marginalisation. The goal was to reach up to 1,000 respondents per study area, with a specific focus on residents from marginalised communities.
Achieving this required more than simply distributing an online questionnaire. Each country adopted recruitment strategies tailored to its socio-cultural context:
- Collaboration with local organisations and community groups
- Snowball sampling approaches to extend outreach
- Targeted social media campaigns
- Engagement with professional survey panels
- Translation of the survey into local languages to maximise accessibility
Reaching communities experiencing high levels of material deprivation presents well-known challenges for researchers. Yet the response demonstrates both the relevance of the topic and the strength of local engagement.
In total, the survey gathered 10,765 responses, with 6,511 complete questionnaires forming the dataset for statistical analysis.
Behind each number is a lived experience of everyday nature and, sometimes, the barriers to accessing it.
Going beyond “Do you visit nature?”
The survey included around 30 questions, exploring interconnected dimensions of everyday life:
- Short-term mental wellbeing
- Nature connectedness
- Barriers to accessing green and blue spaces
- Awareness of nature’s health benefits
- Socio-demographic characteristics
- Preferences and perceived qualities of green and blue spaces
But one of the most innovative components was participatory mapping; respondents were invited to identify the green and blue spaces they had visited in the previous two weeks. These spaces were then independently audited to assess their environmental quality. This means the project is not only asking how people feel but also examining the characteristics of the places they actually experience.
It allows the team to explore not just whether people access nature, but what kind of nature, and under what conditions.
What now?
The next phase focuses on statistical analysis addressing two central research questions
- How is short-term mental health associated with recent time spent experiencing nature?
- How is recent exposure to nature related to levels of marginalisation and the quality of the spaces visited?
In other words:
- Does everyday exposure to nature measurably relate to mental wellbeing?
- Are high-quality green and blue spaces equitably accessible?
- Do social inequalities shape not only access to nature, but also its quality?
Why this matters
Across Europe, urbanisation, environmental pressures and social inequality intersect in complex ways. While the idea that “nature is good for you” is widely accepted, less is understood about who benefits most, under what conditions, and whether those benefits are equitably distributed.
By combining large-scale survey data, participatory mapping, and environmental audits, WP4 is building one of the most comprehensive datasets within GreenME. Although the detailed findings are still under analysis, the scale of participation alone sends a powerful message: across seven countries, people are willing to share how nature fits (or does not) into their daily lives.
Those 10,000+ voices are now helping to generate evidence that can inform urban planning, public health strategies, and nature-based health promotion policies aimed at strengthening mental health equity.