Influence of outdoor recreation on self-rated human health: comparing three categories of Swedish recreationists

This study investigated the relationship between self-rated human health and outdoor recreation, comparing three categories of Swedish outdoor recreationists. Data were obtained from three different surveys, concerning outdoor recreation in all of Sweden, outdoor recreation in southern Swedish forests and hunting in all of Sweden. The influence of outdoor recreation on health was measured by comparing self-rated health in the current situation with a hypothetical situation where the possibility for outdoor recreation was suggested to be removed. The removal resulted in a reduction of average self-rated health in all three samples. The average reduction was significantly different between the samples. The results in this paper suggest that methods usually used in medical research can also be useful in the context of measuring the influence of outdoor recreation on human health.