Having one be physically active can lead to many benefits as mentioned previously it can have a large and positive impact on one’s quality of life. An amazing way to be more active is to visit your local park. Public parks have been shown to provide social, physical, and psychological benefits to the residents that have easy access to the park, but not much research was done about the comprehensive well-being of the people.
The research article “Public Parks and Wellbeing in Urban Areas of the United States” by Lincoln Larson, Viniece Jennings, and Scott Cloutier looks into the relationship between urban park quality, quantity, and accessibility and self reported scores on the Gallup-Healthways WellbeingIndex (WBI). The authors obtained data from various secondary data sources. These secondary sources had data from over a hundred US cities, but after shifting through the data to match the various variables of this study, only 44 cities data were eligible for use.
From the information that was used for the study, it shows that percentage of parkland, per capita spending, and park accessibility all seem to have a positive effect on the well-being of the residents, but it seems that percentage of parkland has a higher correlation than the other factors.
So according to the study the more land a park covers, there is a better chance of the residents around the park to have a higher sense of well being. This sense of well being is amazing because it can lead the person to have a higher quality of life. Having a higher quality of life can lead to more happiness in life, and exercise can help that. Public parks are a great way to become more physically active as it can generally provide a safe and fun place to be active.
Larson, L., Jennings, V., Cloutier, S., & Lepczyk, C. (2016). Public parks and wellbeing in urban areas of the United States. PLoS ONE, 11(4), E0153211.