Beyond exposure: Pathways between urban greening, nature connection and wellbeing in Australian policy frameworks

Urban greening initiatives are increasingly positioned as strategies to improve health and wellbeing in cities. While academic research has long acknowledged the role of psychological connections to nature in shaping wellbeing, it is unclear whether and how this relationship is recognised in urban greening policy. This study examines how Australian urban greening and biodiversity strategies conceptualise and evaluate wellbeing and nature connection. We conducted a structured review of 43 policy documents from state and local governments across Australia, analysing how strategies define and operationalise these concepts. We found that while strategies acknowledge multiple dimensions of wellbeing and recognise both physical and psychological connections to nature, evaluation practices focus almost exclusively on biophysical outputs of urban greening, such as canopy cover and park access. Psychological connections to nature were absent from evaluation targets, and most strategies lacked indicators assessing medium- to long-term wellbeing outcomes. This highlights a significant gap between how wellbeing and nature connection are conceptualised and how they are evaluated in practice. We provide recommendations for integrating psychological dimensions of nature connection into urban greening policy, including clearer articulation of causal pathways, consistent conceptualisation, and development of evaluation frameworks that capture both nature connection and wellbeing as measurable outcomes.