284. Exploring the service path of integrating psychological motivation and natural immersion in tourism for tourists' mental health

Abstract Background In the fast-paced modern life, people face many pressures and psychological challenges, and the demand for support for mental health is increasing day by day. Tourism, as an important form of leisure, not only provides physical relaxation but also has a positive impact on mental health. Psychodynamics emphasizes the emotions and motivations deep within an individual's heart, while natural immersion leverages the power of the natural environment to promote physical and mental recovery. Therefore, research focuses on integrating psychological motivation and natural immersion in tourism models, exploring their unique effects on tourists' mental health. By carefully designing service paths that combine the two, the aim is to help tourists explore themselves deeply in the embrace of nature, relieve stress, enhance emotions, and strengthen psychological resilience. Methods Select 70 volunteers and randomly divide them into an experimental group and a control group, with 35 people in each group. The control group underwent routine tourism, while the experimental group adopted a tourism approach that integrated psychological motivation and natural immersion. The psychological health of volunteers was evaluated using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The significance test p>.05 indicates significant differences between groups. Results There was no statistically significant difference in GAD-7 and DASS-21 scores between the two groups of volunteers before intervention (p>.05), indicating comparability between the groups. The GAD-7 and DASS-21 scores of each group after intervention are shown in Table 1. According to Table 1, the GAD-7 scores of the experimental group and the control group were 4.31 ± 1.02 and 5.9 ± 1.15, respectively p<.05). The DASS-21 scores of the two groups were 24.64 ± 6.98 and 29.36 ± 7.85, respectively (p<.05). The above results indicate that the proposed method can effectively improve the psychological health of tourists. Discussion The research results showed that after intervention, the GAD-7 score and DASS-21 score of the experimental group were significantly lower than those of the control group (p<.05), confirming that the tourism mode integrating psychological motivation and natural immersion has a better effect on improving tourists' mental health than conventional tourism. This mode alleviates physiological tension through the healing properties of the natural environment, combined with psychological motivation to deepen self-awareness, effectively reducing negative emotions such as anxiety and stress under dual effects. This provides a new path for the design of psychological health service-oriented tourism products, and in the future, the matching degree between psychological guidance programs and natural scenes can be further optimized. Due to the limited sample size of the study, the sample size can be expanded in the future to explore the differences in adaptability of different populations to this tourism model.