Thursday 29.1.26
at 11:00 in the 3rd floor conference room in Amado building
This dissertation investigates how exposure to nature—and the dose at which it is experienced—shapes human wellbeing across different environmental contexts. It integrates evidence from two complementary research domains: wellbeing derived from direct experiences in non-urban natural environments, and public acceptance of nature-based solutions in urban settings. The first study develops and validates the Nature Related Wellbeing Scale (NRWS), demonstrating that nature-related wellbeing is a stable, multidimensional construct capturing restorative and stress-reducing processes beyond general wellbeing measures. The subsequent studies use discrete choice experiments to examine public preferences for green living façades, revealing non-linear dose–response patterns in which intermediate levels of vegetation are consistently preferred over both low and very high levels. Together, the findings show that human responses to nature are structured, context-sensitive, and governed by systematic rather than linear “more-is-better” relationships.
Contact information: Lee Gafter | 054-2144503 | mail: leegafter@campus.technion.ac.il