Travel photos have one theme that makes people happy, according to an analysis of 31,500 photographs across 185 countries.
The travel photos analyzed by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) on social media have been tagged as "fun, #vacations, and #honeymoons.
Unlike photographs labeled as #daily or #routines, the images they studied typically show elements of nature such as water, plants, and natural landscape.
The study "Social media, nature, and life satisfaction: global evidence of the biophilia hypothesis" published in Scientific Reports aimed to examine the benefits of experience nature using social media and artificial intelligence (AI).
Associate Professor Roman Carrasco and Dr Chang Chia-chen of the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS Faculty of Science used an automated image recognition technology to analyze over 31,500 photographs on social media.
"Integrating social media data and AI opens up a unique opportunity for us to carry out unprecedented large-scale global studies such as this to better understand our interactions with nature in our daily lives," said Dr Chang, Research Fellow at the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS Faculty of Science and first author of the study.
Connection with nature
The study's results are consistent with other observations across different countries and support global evidence of biophilia hypothesis, which refers to innate quality of human beings to connect with nature.
The findings also support the positive link between nature and good memories in events like honeymoon.
The study suggests that the amount of nature experiences in a country has an impact on the life satisfaction of its residents. Among the countries with elements of nature in images that are tagged as #fun are Costa Rica and Finland. These countries performed well in terms of higher life national satisfaction scores based on the World Happiness Report 2019.
The analysis also emphasizes the importance of nature in the emotional happiness, relaxation, and life satisfaction in communities.
"Our study brings to light the cultural and social values that nature brings to humans. It further emphasises the importance of preserving our natural environment for the loss of nature may mean more than losing quantifiable economic and ecological benefits; it could also mean losing the background to our fondest memories," said Assoc. Prof. Carrasco.
