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Behavioral Sciences
Research has shown the therapeutic benefits of coastal restoration, including physiological, mental-emotional, and creativity-related benefits. The coastal zone is also regarded as a daily therapeutic space, where the frequency of visiting blue spaces is positively correlated with psychological well-being, happiness, and physical activity levels.
- coast
- human geography
- therapeutic landscapes
1. Introduction
Early researchers proposed that the environment can contribute to the health benefits of individuals and society by reducing stress, alleviating anxiety, and reducing feelings of fear [1,2,3]. Even just taking walks in natural environments has been found to be beneficial for health [4].
However, since Geslers [5,6] proposed the study of therapeutic landscapes, it has directed a new topic for the study of medical geography: why are certain places or situations considered therapeutic? There have been a number of studies exploring the healing and health-enhancing dimensions of places [7]. Following Gesler’s work, researchers have recognized the importance of maintaining health and well-being, which extends far beyond healing experiences. “The themes of therapeutic landscape include man-environment relationships; humanist concepts such as sense of place and symbolic landscapes” [5]. Moreover, what matters more is the quality of the relationship between therapeutic landscapes and the individual’s experience [7]. This shift acknowledges that places inherently do not possess healing properties; instead, it is through the dynamic interaction between individuals and their environment that opportunities for health and well-being are generated [8].
In recent years, there has been significant progress in the research on therapeutic landscapes within the physical, social, and symbolic dimensions, particularly regarding “nature-based” therapeutic encounters [7]. Notably, there has been fruitful exploration of sensory responses to the environment, with a focus on engaging with the processes and temporalities of intimate, visceral place sensing [9]. “Nature-based” therapeutic encounters view the body as an instrument for perceiving and sensing the social environment, rather than merely as a container.
Currently, research on environmental healing tends to focus on green landscapes (for example, parks, green spaces, forests, mountains, and even virtual green spaces [14,15,16,17]), and quantitative indicators are predominantly used. This approach can be considered a “symptom-oriented” method, where specific themed healing environments such as hot springs and forests (distinct from everyday living spaces) provide possibilities for users to temporarily escape emotionally stimulating situations [18,19]. While these environments can achieve immediate physiological stress reduction (as measured by indicators) [14,19,20,21,22,23], the long-term healing effects remain unknown, as most studies only involve one [14,15,22,23]. Although significant, the effects were observed only in the short term, highlighting the limitation of capturing cross-sectional data and virtual experiences [15]. It is important to discuss the possibility that participants may experience short-term negative emotional displacement due to the enchanting scenery, and this should be considered from different perspectives.
2. The Therapeutic Imagery of the Coastal Zone
The cultural interpretation of the coast is constantly evolving, from its enjoyment amongst the Ancient Greeks and Romans as a place of pleasure and beauty [28]. And then, the ocean is also filled with fear. The sea has been associated with various metaphors of rage and symbolizes various wild and untamed creatures. “The ocean dances with a mane of lions; the sea spray is likened to “the drool of sea monsters” and is said to cling to their claws” [29].
Human geographers have focused more precisely on the coastal zone. The characteristics of concave coasts evoke a sense of safety, while the expansive horizon stimulates human adventurous desires. Especially throughout the 19th century, the coastal zone provided happiness and health to humans, with its value surpassing its economic output [32]. It was only after people recognized the health benefits of sea bathing that health enthusiasts turned their attention to the coast, shifting from thermal springs [33,34]. The coastal zone has also served as an environment for sustenance, learning, and the earliest human habitats [35]. Cultural geographers [31] have commented on the potential of the coast to “generate a palpable intensity of feeling” [36].
Research has shown the therapeutic benefits of coastal restoration [37], including physiological, mental-emotional, and creativity-related benefits [38,39,40]. The coastal zone is also regarded as a daily therapeutic space [28], where the frequency of visiting blue spaces is positively correlated with psychological well-being, happiness, and physical activity levels [41]. Moreover, interactions with the coast often involve enduring connections [28]. Studies have also shown that emotional attachments formed in everyday life in the coastal zone can lead to a profound understanding of the interests at stake in local development and inspire actions to play a role [42].
Since the 19th century, the coastal zone has seemingly become synonymous with holidays and leisure, leading to the neglect of its significance as a daily living space for local residents. Therefore, the therapeutic landscape of the coastal zone is lacking in previous studies to separate the recreational components. Furthermore, compared to green spaces such as mountains, forests, parks, and gardens, the therapeutic landscape of the coastal zone has received less attention from the academic community [28]. However, within the broader literature, the coast has been conceptualized as a “therapeutic landscape” [8,9,43].
Sense and Memory of Previous Experience
People experience the world in terms of how they can act—in terms of their effectivities or action capability [44]. A percept may be considered to be the mental image of the external environment, and it is clearly based on two kinds of information: input from the senses and memory of previous experience [45]. Following the ecological viewpoint that human beings seek survival in the environment, for Gibson [46], senses adapt to the environment due to continuous evolution, and the sensory nervous system picks up information and forms perception. Meanwhile, invisibility, adjusting sensory input, selective attention, and other perceptual activities can make information an effective stimulus and create environmental affordances [46].
Therefore, the key point is how to pick up senses and memories of previous experience in people’s daily life activities in coastal areas. According to the word definition of sense, sense is an ability to understand, recognize, value, or react to something, especially any of the five physical abilities to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel [47]. However, only kinaesthesia (muscle movement) perception, vision, and touch can make human beings have a strong sense of space and space quality, and movements are the basis of the awareness of space [48]. It is pointed out that primates can improve the quality of perception through the extension and refinement of motor investigation, and the evolution of vision is an important basis for animal evolution. Animals can understand the surrounding environment well so that they can control the environment for their own direct interests; visual, somatic sensory, and auditory inputs will be analyzed and integrated with the motor and proprioceptive patterns [45].
People’s feelings are not formed by individuals but by long-term memories and expected results of many experiences. “in English, “I see”, means “I understand”” [48]. Seeing has a kind of recogninized, which includes a selective and creative process. Taste activities are related to touch and smell. For example, licking a candy will find the shape of the candy and the taste of caramel. From the previous examples, it can be inferred that people use their senses to send complex commands to the life world [48]. Therefore, visit frequency is the intersection of space and behavior, and it is also one of the methods to continuously filter environmental information; on the one hand, it is selected, and on the other hand, it is constructed.
Memory is very important, as it is not only an experience record of an event but also a generalization of spatial relations. We can get the information in the environment from the results of manipulating objects, and generalization can deepen and extend these spatial relations indefinitely [45]. The time factor can exert a greater generalization effect. It is pointed out that the environment under the influence of time is not just a three-dimensional pattern, but primates can perceive it as an “assemblage of objects” [45].
The perceptual process formed by the interaction between people and the environment is the core of environmental behavior. The environment provides information to stimulate the senses, and perception is the result of people’s filtering of environmental information [49]. The course of perception cannot separate people from the environment because what people do in the environment determines perception [50].
The research on coastal communities points out that public participation can be an effective way to deal with environmental issues; the degree of participation is an important indicator, and frequency is usually the primary factor [51,52]. However, there is more information behind the frequency, such as residence time and activity type, which can obtain the interaction between people and the environment [53].
Tourists are different from residents. The characteristic of tourists is to constantly seek new places, and in the new environment, they will lack some sensory support. Therefore, they always think that “vacation areas, however delightful, seem unreal after a time” [48]. Therefore, in the study of cultural tourism, the frequency of use is regarded as the primary factor to verify the authenticity [54]. In contrast, the awareness of local residents is very important to the decision making of surrounding environment development, and only the participation of residents can make sustainable development possible [52]. People know the neighborhood very well, and even if the frequency of visits is low, it is possible to consciously and theoretically gather places into a spatial relationship [48].
On the other hand, Gesler notes that “what is therapeutic must be seen in the context of social and economic conditions and changes” [55]. Durling period of the COVID-19 pandemic, which occurred between 2020 and 2022, has indeed brought about changes in the relationship between individuals and spaces. The experience of lockdown has made people more aware of their connection with nature [56,57]. Studies on lockdown during the pandemic have indicated that the absence of interactions with the coastal zone can disrupt the imagery of home [58].
“Place is a special kind of object. It is a concretion of value, though not a valued thing that can be handled or carried about easily; it is an object in which one can dwell” [48]. The imagery of home serves as a sanctuary, a place of healing, regardless of one’s physical location. However, understanding how individuals establish a sense of home and emotional connection with the coastal zone is a crucial aspect to consider.
Whether it is abstract or concrete symbols, it is the significance for human beings to use it to express meaning [5], as cultural values, social behavior, and individual actions worked upon particular localities over a span of time [59]. The cultural landscape can be viewed as a product of symbolic action; it reveals structures or represents cultural images [60,61,62].
There is too much of the accepted pattern of daily living to warrant reflective thought. In particular, untoward events will force us to reflect [48]. For example, the aforementioned COVID-19 virus infection, unpredictable risks, and troublesome experiences often lead to physical and mental troubles, such as anxiety, depression, memory loss, or stress [63,64,65,66,67,68]. Such special experiences will lead to reflection [69,70,71,72], event memory [73,74], and behavioral changes [75,76].
Human geographers and psychologists pay great attention to the interaction between people and the environment. No matter whether the words used are movements, acts, visits, or investigations, they are all seeking to adapt to the environment. The behavior change formed by reflection and memory from special experiences is characterized by the interaction between people and the environment. Under the stimulation of environmental behavior, people consciously pick up the landscape elements in the coastal zone to form a sense of place and a symbolic landscape with affordances; after a new spatial relationship is assembled, it becomes a therapeutic landscape and comes back to heal the wounds caused by the untoward event.
This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/bs13100794
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