Fisher, JC, Dallimer, M orcid.org/0000-0001-8120-3309, Irvine, KN et al. (5 more authors) (2023) Human well-being responses to species’ traits. Nature Sustainability, 6 (10). pp. 1219-1227. ISSN 2398-9629
Abstract
People rely on well-functioning ecosystems to provide critical services that underpin human health and well-being. Consequently, biodiversity loss has profound negative implications for humanity. Human–biodiversity interactions can deliver individual-level well-being gains, equating to substantial healthcare cost savings when scaled up across populations. However, critical questions remain about which species and/or traits (for example, colours, sounds and smells) elicit well-being responses. The traits that influence well-being can be considered ‘effect’ traits. Using techniques from community ecology, we have analysed a database of species’ effect traits articulated by people to identify those that generate different types of well-being (physical, emotional, cognitive, social, spiritual and ‘global’ well-being, the latter being akin to ‘whole-person health’). Effect traits have a predominately positive impact on well-being, influenced by the identity and taxonomic kingdom of each species. Different sets of effect traits deliver different types of well-being. However, traits cannot be considered independently of species because multiple traits can be supported by a single species. Indeed, we have found that numerous effect traits from across the ecological community can elicit multiple types of well-being, illustrating the complexity of biodiversity experiences. Our empirical approach can help to implement interdisciplinary thinking for biodiversity conservation and nature-based public health interventions designed to support human well-being.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/V006916/1 EU - European Union 726104 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jul 2023 15:15 |
Last Modified: | 08 Nov 2023 12:29 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41893-023-01151-3 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:200661 |