ABSTRACT
Nature and natural landscapes can aord a therapeutic and healing connection that can be promoted at tourism destinations set within such environments. The potential therapeutic eect of nature and natural settings is well documented (Hartig et al., 2014). Simply viewing natural landscapes has shown to help with short-term recovery from stress or mental fatigue (Pearson and Craig, 2014: 3), enable faster physical recovery from illness and contribute to long-term overall improvement of people’s health and wellbeing (Velarde et al., 2007). Experimental approaches in the medical literature gauging physiological and psychological benets abound. Bowler et al. (2010) synthesise the ndings from 25 studies on physical health benets of nature, demonstrating the ways in which natural environments may have direct and positive impacts on wellbeing. Haluza et al. (2014: 5454), in their review of the medical literature on natural health, found that ‘[s]hort-term restorative eects of outdoor Nature could be found for almost all measured physiological parameters’. These tentative indications of nature’s restorative capacities have also been the focus of environmental psychology grasping individual perceptions and experiences of the healing and wellbeing benets of the environment. This is exemplied in the work of Kaplan (1995), who frames the restorative capacities of nature through its role in focusing attention and integrally reducing stress.
