Healing Tourism and Quality of Life: Focused on Forest Recreation

This paper empirically analyzes the effect of healing tourism on the quality of life using the Survey on Forest Recreation and Welfare Activities in 2022 by the Korea Forest Service. Forest recreation and welfare activities can be classified into three types, that is, activities in forest for less than four hours, at least four hours, and multiple days. Empirical results indicate that minimum four-hour activities in forest tend to increase the quality of life by greater extent than activities in forest under four hours and that activities in forest for multiple days have a larger effect on the quality of life than minimum four-hour activities in forest. In addition, the degree to which people are satisfied by the forest recreation and welfare activities differs by types. Whereas activities in forest for less than four hours cause different satisfaction across the groups by education levels, minimum four-hour activities in forest affect the satisfaction differently across age-cohorts. Activities in forest for multiple days show different effects on satisfaction across groups by gender, age-cohorts, education level, number of household members, and size of living areas. It implies that there are big gaps in the satisfaction of activities in forest for multiple days by people’s characteristics. These days, the depressive disorder belongs to one of the main mental diseases and its social costs are steadily increasing. The empirical results of this paper that healing tourism improves the quality of life imply that an introduction of a policy that boosts people’s tours for healing is required.