In a randomised controlled trial study design, the app prompted 582 adults, including a subgroup of adults classified by baseline scores on the Recovering Quality of Life scale as having a common mental health problem (n = 148), to notice the good things about urban nature (intervention condition) or built spaces (active control). In an increasingly urbanised world where mental health is currently in crisis, interventions to increase human engagement and connection with the natural environment are one of the fastest growing, most widely accessible, and cost-effective ways of improving human wellbeing. This study aimed to provide an evaluation of a smartphone app-based wellbeing intervention. There were statistically significant and sustained improvements in wellbeing at one-month follow-up. Importantly, in the noticing urban nature condition, compared to a built space control, improvements in quality of life reached statistical significance for all adults and clinical significance for those classified as having a mental health difficulty. This improvement in wellbeing was partly explained by significant increases in nature connectedness and positive affect. This study provides the first controlled experimental evidence that noticing the good things about urban nature has strong clinical potential as a wellbeing intervention and social prescription.There is considerable evidence that a healthy natural environment - particularly where people live - and regular access to it, can contribute positively to the health and wellbeing of the population, and that it has the most benefit on those with the highest levels of ill-health. As society looks for cost effective ways to boost mental and physical health and quality of life, it is clear that increased positive interaction between people and the natural environment could be a significant part of the UK's future health care arrangements. However, this potential is not yet being fulfilled - in part because we do not fully understand how and why people interact with the natural environment, and which aspects of the environment, and people's experience of it, lead to positive health and wellbeing outcomes. Does the biodiversity of a place affect people's health and wellbeing? Why are some sections of society, on whom natural environments could have the greatest positive impact, less likely than average to visit natural places? What part does experience of and connection to nature play? What role does access to a high quality natural environment have in the health and wellbeing of people at particularly significant stages in their lives (when they are most vulnerable to ill-health)? If we understood the physical, psychological and socio-economic reasons why members of black, asian and minority ethnic communities, the elderly, disadvantaged urban residents, and those from lower socio-economic groups (in particular) interact with the natural environment as they do - and how this changes through their lives - it would enable us to design and manage our urban spaces more effectively to generate health and wellbeing benefits, and to engage critically important sections of society more effectively, to great social and economic benefit. This project will study the interaction within one large city between people, their local natural environment and their health and wellbeing. It aims to: 1. Understand at a detailed level how the health and wellbeing of the people within different neighbourhoods relates to the quantity, quality and distribution of natural greenspaces where they live; 2. Investigate the role that culture, upbringing, social values and norms play in this; 3. Explore how people from different ethnic and socio-economic groups interact with greenspaces and how this affects their connectedness to nature, and mental health and wellbeing; 4. Discover how the biodiversity value of the places that people visit affects their mental health and wellbeing; 5. Develop a way to assess the economic implications of these insights; 6. Develop effective ways to feed this knowledge into the policy, delivery and investment decisions of politicians, planners, designers, developers, land managers, public health commissioners and other professionals, business leaders and relevant voluntary and community organisations. It will: 1. Explore the relationship between urban natural environments and health and wellbeing across the whole of Sheffield - focusing especially on mental health and using more detailed datasets than those used in previous research; 2. Explore how urban residents from diverse backgrounds (especially differentiated by age, gender, ethnicity and mental health service use) communicate their own stories and values relating to contact and connectedness with nature; 3. Use an innovative smartphone App to record the interactions of a large population sample with Sheffield's natural environment, and its relationship to their nature connectedness and personal wellbeing; 4. Quantify the biodiversity value of different parts of Sheffield's environment and identify the relationship between this and the nature connectedness and personal wellbeing of people experiencing them; 5. Identify the economic, practical and policy implications of these insights, and effective ways of applying them.

A Smartphone application called Shmapped was developed. The app is a dual data-collection tool and intervention which uses location-driven prompts to capture people’s wellbeing in the moment of being outdoors in publicly accessible green spaces. This was achieved through GPS positioning and geofences to locate green spaces. The Smartphone app was created to (i) monitor peoples use of green spaces, (ii) identify relationships between types of green space (i.e., woodland, wetland etc.) and wellbeing, and (iii) to act as an intervention to increase nature connectedness and wellbeing. This study targeted Sheffield residents who were over 18 years old and owned a Smartphone. Smartphone-based studies tend to attract middle-class adults, so a representative sample regarding socio-economic status was therefore targeted by trying to encourage recruitment from areas classed as higher on the 2015 English index of multiple deprivation. The main strategies for promoting the Smartphone app were through social media; distributing posters and leaflets; through conservation organisations (namely the Wildlife Trusts), Council staff, large local employers, and General Practitioners (GPs). Responses indicated that social media (n = 408) was the most successful strategy, followed by theWildlife Trust (n = 107) and posters/leaflets (n = 103). However, most participants found out about the study through outside these approaches as ‘other’ was selected most (n = 821). Participants were randomly allocated to either the green space condition or an active control (built space condition). The design was a repeated measures time-series experimental design with self-reported measures of wellbeing and nature connectedness completed in the app at three time-points: baseline, post-intervention and follow-up at one month. A total of 582 adults, including a subgroup of adults classified by baseline scores on the Recovering Quality of Life scale as having a common mental health problem (n = 148) were recruited, with 70% of participants randomly allocated to the green space condition. Those who completed the study took part between November 2017 and May 2018. Depending on condition, built or nature, participants were asked to record a good thing about their surroundings once a day for 7 days. For the green-space condition, when participants' phone's GPS recorded them as being within a green space, the app prompted them to enter one good thing they had noticed. For the built-space condition participants were prompted by their phone at random points during the day, with an evening reminder in order to produce an experience similar to those in the green space condition. Sending out random prompts as opposed to prompting when users were not in green spaces was necessary, as there was also no equivalent dataset identifying ‘urban or grey spaces’ held by Sheffeld City Council. Participants who completed the post-intervention measures were eligible to receive a £20 voucher. Of the 1112 people who downloaded the app, 582 (54.2%) were eligible to participate (aged over 18 years and living in Sheffeld as denoted by their postcode) and supplied baseline data. Of those who supplied baseline data, 322 (55.1%) completed post-intervention measures and 164 (27.4%) completed follow-up measures at 1 month.