Forest Therapy and Human Health

A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Forestry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 March 2025 | Viewed by 1205

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Forest Utilization, Institute of Forest Sciences, University of Life Sciences in Warsaw, Now-oursynowska 159, 02-776 Warsaw, Poland
Interests: people with disabilities; accessibility of space for people with disabilities; nature tourism; forest therapy; universal design; ergonomics

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Guest Editor
Department of Landscape Management, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 3, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Interests: landscape management; forest management; recreation and tourism; nonwood forest products; environmental protection
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Forest Research Institute, Department of Geomatics, 05-090 Sękocin Stary, Poland
Interests: nature tourism; forest therapy; forestry; nature education
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Contact with nature, especially forests, helps humans to fight stress, improves well-being, and protects human mental health. Even a short stay in a forest improves mood, provides more energy, reduces emotional tension, and increases positive feelings. Forest bathing can be useful in the fight against depression, anxiety, and attention deficit. However, there are still many elements related to forest therapy that need to be analyzed, including limits on the use of the forest environment resulting from, for example, human health or the condition of the forest. Moreover, there is a need to develop a list of factors that can increase the effectiveness of the forest’s impact on the human body or weaken it. Research into the economic evaluation and environmental justice potential of forest landscapes is also needed.

The aim of this Special Issue is to present interdisciplinary research on the latest achievements in the field of forest therapy, as well as attempt to evaluate and synthesize the existing research carried out in this direction. Potential topics include the impact of the forest on people of different ages and health conditions, the durability of the impact of the forest on human health, forms of forest therapy, threats to the use of the forest environment, forest therapy, and public health.

Dr. Malgorzata Woznicka
Dr. Jitka Fialova
Dr. Natalia Korcz
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • forest therapy
  • forest bathing
  • human well-being
  • Shinrin-yoku
  • forest healing
  • physiological
  • public health
  • health services

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 1671 KiB  
Article
Tourism Crisis Events Affecting Intention towards Forest-Based Health Tourism: A Structural Equation Model
by Chan Xiao, Jirawan Deeprasert and Songyu Jiang
Forests 2024, 15(8), 1324; https://doi.org/10.3390/f15081324 - 30 Jul 2024
Viewed by 914
Abstract
Since the beginning of the 21st century, various tourism crisis events have negatively impacted the global tourism industry. This study proposes a research model grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response theory to explore how external stimuli influence individuals and help identify factors influencing elderly individuals’ [...] Read more.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, various tourism crisis events have negatively impacted the global tourism industry. This study proposes a research model grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response theory to explore how external stimuli influence individuals and help identify factors influencing elderly individuals’ willingness to participate in forest-based health tourism during and after tourism crisis events, considering the global aging trend. From 20 December 2023 to 15 January 2024, we collected 429 valid questionnaires from Chinese older adult participants engaged in forest-based health tourism in Guizhou Province. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and bootstrapping techniques were employed to analyze data. The results indicate that tourism crisis events, primarily in the form of geological disasters, are significant antecedent variables influencing the willingness of Chinese older adults to engage in forest-based health tourism. Furthermore, destination image and perceived value serve as individual mediators and function as chained mediators. The results enhance our understanding of the complex relationship between tourism crisis events and the willingness of older Chinese adults to travel while also revealing deeper underlying mechanisms. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forest Therapy and Human Health)
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