Current Project

Quantifying the Cost Savings of Spending Time in Nature

Researchers: Jingjing (Tina) Tao, Gregory Bratman, Josh Lawler, Sergey Rabotyagov, Spencer Wood

We’re thrilled to announce that we have received a McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research award to begin assessing the cost savings of spending time in nature in Washington state.

Expanding equitable access to nature provides innumerable returns—from buffering against the effects of climate change to reducing chronic disease. These co-benefits can improve the well-being of communities and advance conservation goals, all while providing significant cost savings: a triple-win! Translating this research into systemic change—such as policies for equitable access to parks and forests—requires informing decision-makers about how time spent in nature will make our communities happier and healthier. It also requires us to demonstrate how governments, healthcare insurers, and healthcare facilities will save money by expanding access to safe, culturally-relevant green spaces.

In March 2025, the UW Center for Nature and Health received a McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research award to begin assessing the healthcare costs savings of spending time in nature in Washington state. One of the first steps in this process is understanding the economic costs and benefits of policies that expand access to nature. Researchers across the globe have begun to calculate different types of values for these benefits, and have found that nature contact results in reduced healthcare costs associated with lower insurance spending,1 healthcare bills,2 premature deaths,3 Medicare spending,4 etc. For example, in California, a rigorous analysis by Van Den Eeden et al. found up to an 8% reduction in healthcare costs plausibly attributable to better access/exposure to green space.5

While some recent work has focused on aggregate healthcare spending, individual-level data are necessary to provide insight on precise associations, and to investigate the causal impacts of nature exposure on health for specific beneficiaries. However, individual-level health and healthcare expenditure data are confidential. Gaining access to and using such data is beyond the scope of this work. This study will therefore leverage existing research and take a benefit transfer approach to estimate the healthcare cost savings provided by the forests and other natural areas in Washington.

Benefit transfer analysis involves using an existing model built in a different location or in a different context to predict economic benefits in a specific area or context of interest (as done, for example, by Kondo et al.).6 We will use existing economic models designed to assess healthcare cost savings provided by natural spaces and apply the model(s) to Washington-specific spatial data on the distribution of forests and other green spaces and Washington-specific demographic data. By producing an estimate of the healthcare savings provided by Washington forests, we aim to inform policies and programs that advance equitable access to forests and the health benefits they provide.