Association between forest and greenspace walking and stress-coping skills among workers of Tsukuba Science City, Japan: A cross-sectional study

OBJECTIVES: Recently, “sense of coherence” (SOC) as a concept of stress-coping, has been gaining considerable attention. Although many studies have investigated the factors related to strong SOC, we found little evidence about the associations between SOC and habits that are easy to perform in everyday life. The aim our study was to examine the prevalence of workers who engage in forest walking and greenspace walking and examine their association with SOC score. STUDY DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. METHODS: An anonymous, self-report web questionnaire was conducted in November 2017. The study population included 19481 workers belonging to the Tsukuba Science City Network and data of 6466 participants (3965 men and 2501 women) were analyzed. RESULTS: The percentage of participants who engage in forest and greenspace walking at least once a year were 55.9% and 75.9%, respectively. Associations between forest/greenspace walking and SOC score were calculated using Chi-squared tests. Multinomial logistic regression analyses with SOC score group (strong/middle/weak) as a dependent variable and forest/greenspace walking as explanatory variables were performed. Statistically significant positive associations were observed between strong SOC and those who engaged in forest/greenspace walking after adjusting for socioeconomic factors. The odds ratios for strong SOC were 3.65 (95% CI ​= ​1.70–7.85) for forest walking at least once a week and 2.12 for greenspace walking (95% CI ​= ​1.54–2.92) at least once a week. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggested that forest/greenspace walking may enhance workers’ stress-coping skills.