Researchers discover a hobby that brings the most happiness during the pandemic
American researchers from the Princeton University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering have made a discovery. Home gardening makes city residents happier during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are presented in the study “Landscape and Urban Planning”.
The authors tracked the emotional well-being of 370 Minneapolis-St. Paul residents in connetion with the impact of daily activities on the level of people’s happiness. Among such activities were walking, shopping, travelling in public transport, eating out etc. However the researchers were very surprised to find out that a third of the respondents preferred home gardening as their hobby. According to the study, people dedicate around 90 minutes a week to home gardening. As the report states, home garderners have the highest level of happiness. Such people feel more their meaningfulness in the society than the rest of the respondents who had other hobbies.
It is remarkable that even people with low income and lonely people occupied with home gardening demonstrated really high levels of emotional well-being equal to those with high income and couples.
One of the study authors, Graham Ambrose, points out that government till now has been not aware that home gardening brings so much happiness to people. The hobby can be used for depression treatment. The researcher noticed that if some dirt and a trowel can bright up people’s life then better to support such individual projects than to invest big money in huge recreational centres. Ambrose emphasized the importance of home gardening not only for personal emotional well-being but also for the eco-development of cities. Moreover, this hobby helps to enrich market with natural products (fruits, vegetable) and plants.
If you are interested in gardening you can check our article on growing a lotus at home.
Title photo: freepik