Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Today, research and theories about health promoting environments often describes how and why certain environments are more qualified than others to support health outcomes. The environments that are suggested to possess these health promoting qualities are in most cases characterized by the presence of natural elements. But seeing how the world consists of so many types of places with various distinctive features, the possibility of other forms of health bringing qualities must exist. And given the fact that new, alternative methods are needed to deal with the increase in modern day public health issues, other forms of environments should be examined. This work tries to account for this knowledge gap by exploring and investigating the health promoting qualities of cultural heritage sites. Cultural heritage sites have been shown in previous research to possess some qualities that might support health and well-being but have not been investigated thoroughly. A scoping review was therefore applied to identify factors in existing research of cultural heritage sites that could indicate some form of healthrelated process. Then, current theories of environmental psychology and health, related to the reviewed research were broken down and analyzed in relation to what type of mechanisms and dimensions lies behind them. Finally, a synthesis was made of the different thematic factors and a new theoretical framework is proposed, describing how cultural heritage sites can be used and further studied as health promoting environments.