Topophilia and the Quality of Life Oladele A. Ogunseitan Department of Environmental Health, Science, and Policy, University of California, Irvine, California, USA Abstract With this research I tested the hypothesis that individual preferences for specific ecosystem components and restorative environments are significantly associated with quality of life (QOL) . A total of 379 human subjects responded to a structured 18-item questionnaire on topophilia and to the 26-item World Health Organization’s Quality of Life (WHOQOL-Bref) instrument. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed four domains of topophilia (ecodiversity, synesthetic tendency, cognitive challenge, and familiarity) and four domains of QOL (physical, psychological, social, and environmental) . Synesthetic tendency was the strongest domain of topophilia, whereas the psychological aspect of QOL was the strongest. Structural equation modeling was used to explore the adequacy of a theoretical model linking topophilia and QOL. The model fit the data extremely well: 2 = 5.02, p = 0.414 ; correlation = 0.12 (p = 0.047) . All four domains of topophilia were significantly correlated with the level of restoration experienced by respondents at their current domicile [for cognitive challenge: r = 0.19 ; p < 0.01 ; familiarity: r = 0.12 ; p < 0.05 ; synesthetic tendency: r = 0.18 ; p < 0.01 ; ecodiversity (the highest value) : r = 0.28 ; p < 0.01]. Within ecodiversity, preferences for water and flowers were associated with high overall QOL (r = 0.162 and 0.105, respectively ; p < 0.01 and 0.05, respectively) . Within the familiarity domain, identifiability was associated with the environmental domain of QOL (r = 0.115 ; p < 0.05) , but not with overall QOL. These results provide a new methodologic framework for linking environmental quality and human health and for implementing evidence-based provision of restorative environments through targeted design of built environments to enhance human QOL. Key words: ecosystems, mental health, nature, quality of life, restorative environments, stress, topophilia. Environ Health Perspect 113:143-148 (2005) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7467 available via http://dx.doi.org/ doi:10.1289/ehp.7467 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 22 November 2004] Address correspondence to O.A. Ogunseitan, Department of Environmental Health, Science, and Policy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-7070 USA. Telephone: (949) 824-6350. Fax: (949) 824-2056. E-mail: oaogunse@uci.edu I am grateful for the assistance of A. Castro, C. Yi, S. Ly, and M. Poulin. The research benefited from the expertise and insight of E.A. Holman and from the inspirational work of M. Lin in the nexus of architecture and the human experience. This project was funded by grants from the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and the Program in Industrial Ecology at the University of California at Irvine. The author declares he has no competing financial interests. Received 30 July 2004 ; accepted 22 November 2004. The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |