The effect of green facilities on university students' mental health

Abstract

University students are disproportionately affected by some mental illness such as depression and anxiety than many other population groups. An accumulating body of research has addressed the influential factors of human mental health, and the role of green facilities in dealing with mental disorders is increasingly recognized by scholars. However, the effect of green facilities on university students’ mental health has received significantly less attention than in general population. The underlying mechanisms also remain relatively unexplored. Accordingly, this research used a quantitative approach to investigate the impact of both the proportion of various green facilities around university students’ living neighborhoods and their use-frequency of these green facilities on their mental health and examine the underlying mechanisms behind these two associations respectively. A survey was conducted among university students in Utrecht and Geographical Information System techniques was used to map the geography of green facilities around university students’ living places. Structural equation modelling was applied to estimate the association and mechanisms. This study highlights a higher use-frequency of green facilities and more positive mental health among male university students. Also, male students tend to facilitate their physical activity level through increasing the frequency they visit green facilities in their neighborhoods, while they generally have a lower level of feeling of self-supported, they are more likely to perceive people in their living neighborhoods as less concerned with and supportive to each other. Besides, students in a financial struggle tend to experience greater depression and anxiety. After adjusted for socio-economic and demographic characteristics, no association between the proportion of green facilities in university students’ living neighborhoods (which is defined in this study as a 300m buffers around university students’ living place) and their symptoms of depression and anxiety have been found in this study. Although university students’ use-frequency of green facilities in their neighborhoods is also found to exert no overall influence on their mental health, the beneficial effect of university students’ use-frequency of green facilities in their neighborhoods upon mental health has been confirmed to operate through the intermediate mechanism—sense of community