More Contact With Nature May Lead to Lesser Crime And More Social Cohesion

According to a recent study Human contact with nature can be connected to better social and community communications.

Though, a lot of studies have talked about the benefits of connections with nature to the humans, there isn’t much known about the social impact of nature on us.

Through the study published in BioScience, using the representative data from UK and strict model testing in examining relationships between self-reported assessments and objective measures of contact with nature, local crime incidence and community cohesion.

The results obtained by the researchers under the supervision of Netta Weinstein from Cardiff University were striking. It was found that people’s experience of local nature recounted through a survey was able to explain eight percent variance in their perceptions about community cohesion.

Individual factors like age, gender, income, and education together accounted for about three percent variance, thus making the results on relation with nature even more significant.

The relation with crime was prominent too. According to the results, the ratio of green space or accessible farmland in neighbourhood accounted for additional variance of four percent in the crime rates. The study authors believe that this result is roughly at par with other factors responsible for crime like socioeconomic deprivation that accounts for five percent variance.

Hence it’s expected that crime rates can be curbed even in localities with low socioeconomic conditions through contact with nature. The study suggests that it is justified to adopt policies on fighting crime by enhancing people’s contact with nature.

Reference:

Netta Weinstein, Andrew Balmford, Cody R. DeHaan, Valerie Gladwell, Richard B. Bradbury, and Tatsuya Amano. Seeing Community for the Trees: The Links among Contact with Natural Environments, Community Cohesion, and Crime. BioScience, November 2015 DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biv151