Green from the ground up: An expanded call for research on nature contact to achieve environmental sustainability
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In Kühner and colleagues' (2025) focal article, the authors provide a compelling call for how scholars in the field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology can meaningfully contribute to environmental sustainability in organizations.We expand on these ideas to offer a novel and complementary perspective that contributes to the goal of promoting environmental sustainability in organizations.Namely, we argue that nature contact at work may drive meaningful change in both employee health and green behaviors."Nature contact" is an umbrella term that captures sensory experiences with nature, which can include a range of settings (e.g., undisturbed wilderness areas, public parks, bodies of water, indoor plants, virtual nature; Holland et al., 2021).The literatures on nature contact and environmental sustainability share the goals of protecting planetary and human health, so we propose an extended call for research that integrates these areas.To this aim, we (a) present a brief overview of the current state of nature-related research in the organizational sciences, situating nature contact as a health behavior and design feature, (b) provide a rationale for bridging the nature contact and environmental sustainability literatures, and (c) present ideas for advancing interdisciplinary research to achieve environmental sustainability goals. Nature contact and environmental sustainability at workNature contact at work can be conceptualized actively as a health behavior (e.g., Maddock & Razani, 2024) and passively as a design feature (e.g., Ostner, 2021 ).Health behavior studies have examined employee outcomes of taking outdoor work breaks (e.g., Sianoja et al., 2018), spending nonwork time out doors (e.g., Klotz et al., 2023), or both (e.g., Brossoit et al., 2024;Hyvönen et al., 2018).Another line of research has examined the physical quality of the work environment, including "biophilic" design features like natural light and indoor plants (e.g., Sadick & Kamardeen, 2020), outdoor workspaces (e.g., Petersson Troije et al., 2021), and home offices (e.g., Srivastava et al., 2024).Some studies capture both health behaviors (e.g., spending time outside during the workday) in combination with natural workspace design features (e.g., Brossoit et al., InPress;Largo-Wight et al., 2011;Thompson & Bruk-Lee, 2019).Overall, there is a growing literature demonstrating how nature contact can facilitate recovery from work stress, re-energize
Language: English
Topic: Urban Green Space and Health
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W7123972039