Intentional Forest Exposure Scale: Initial development of two questionnaires

Background and objectivesMost self-report measures of nature exposure have relied on a vague term “nature.” As forests offer humans various health-related and economic benefits, a more precise definition of “nature” in such measures to refer to forested areas would make the research focus more precise. This study therefore developed and preliminarily validated two measures (for adulthood and childhood): the Intentional Forest Exposure Scale (IFES) and the Retrospective Intentional Forest Exposure Scale (R-IFES), also addressing aspects of recreation and psychological restoration.MethodsAn online survey involving N = 99 university students’ responses (with 5,000 resamples bootstrapping) was used to explore the factor structure (using exploratory factor analysis; EFA) of IFES and R-IFES (initially designed to include six items each). These two questionnaires are identical in structure except the time frame: for IFES the last 12 months, and for R-IFES during childhood (5–10 years). Internal reliability and convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity were also tested. Face and construct validity were descriptively checked. ResultsThe EFA showed all six items loading onto a single factor for both IFES and R-IFES, but only one of the six R-IFES items yielded a poor loading of 0.39 (the loadings of the remaining 11 items were above 0.65). We therefore removed this R-IFES item and the corresponding IFES item, thereby keeping a parallel structure between the two measures. The five-item IFES and R-IFES were thus developed.Internal validity was also high for both IFES and R-IFES, but convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity were weaker for R-IFES than for IFES. Additionally, R-IFES scores were more concentrated on higher values than IFES scores.ConclusionsAt least the five-item IFES would suffice to measure adult forest exposure. IFES can be used, e.g., in studies on forest recreation and pro-environmental behavior.