Exploring the Connections Between Nature Exposure and Stress During COVID-19 Using Latent Profile Analysis

Abstract

Connection with nature is essential for human well-being and has been correlated to lower stress. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, stress levels and connection with nature changed for many employees in the United States who became fully remote. In this article, we present results from a latent profile analysis (LPA) on a longitudinal study conducted at three timepoints from December 2020 to March 2022 among remote workers. We use LPA to identify latent subgroups characterized by their exposure to both indoor and outdoor sources of nature to better understand how the associations between nature and stress vary across latent subgroups not traditionally considered in research. Conducting a profile-based analysis is important, as literature has shown differences in the associations between nature and stress based on individual characteristics. We discover that the number and characteristics of subgroups change over time as does the connection of nature exposure with stress within these subgroups. Specifically, we find that our population falls within a decreasing number of profiles over time, and that there are significant differences in stress levels between some profiles. We also find that different sources of nature exposure might be important for certain subgroups even if not for the entire population and vice-versa. We discuss potential reasons for these variations and offer implications for future research in this domain. The findings highlight the dynamic nature of stress patterns in response to nature exposure in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. These differences emphasize the need for further work to identify how different subgroups are affected by the associations between nature and stress.