Perceptions of forest contact and its therapeutic role in university students in South Korea
Keywords:
forest, happiness, healing functionAbstract
This paper focuses on the influence of forest experience and its positive implications for undergraduate students. A survey was conducted of 114 undergraduate students in South Korea. The results show that 90.4% of the students reported that forest experience is useful for mental health. The students had experience in forests during the last year, such as visiting one for recreation (8.8%), participating in activities (14.9%), tracking (32.5%), climbing mountains (13.2%), walking in the park (23.7%)), and camping (7%). Korean students who believe that the forest experience has a healing function significantly happier than those who did not. There were significant differences between the groups of beliefs or non-beliefs and the level of happiness (p <.001). Also students who have experience in the woods regularly are significantly happier tan those who did not. Therefore, in this document, we investigate and analyze the perception of forestry experience and its healing function for university students. We propose the implication of the benefit of the forestry experience.
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