A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health. With rapid urbanization and declines in human contact with nature globally, crucial decisions must ...be made about how to preserve and enhance opportunities for nature experience. Here, we first provide points of consensus across the natural, social, and health sciences on the impacts of nature experience on cognitive functioning, emotional well-being, and other dimensions of mental health. We then show how ecosystem service assessments can be expanded to include mental health, and provide a heuristic, conceptual model for doing so.
Rodríguez-Pose A. and Garcilazo E. Quality of government and the returns of investment: examining the impact of cohesion expenditure in European regions, Regional Studies. This paper sets out to ...examine the relationship between the quality of local and regional governments and regional economic performance, linking government quality to the returns of European Union Structural and Cohesion Funds. Using primary data on government quality collected by the Quality of Government Institute, combined with World Bank Global Governance Indicators data, a two-way fixed effect panel regression model is conducted for a total of 169 European regions during the period 1996-2007. The results of the analysis underline the importance of government quality both as a direct determinant of economic growth as well as a moderator of the efficiency of Structural and Cohesion Funds expenditure. The analysis finds that both European Union investments targeting regions and quality of government simultaneously make a difference for regional economic growth, but that above a threshold of cohesion expenditure - calculated at more than €120 of cohesion expenditure per capita per year - government quality improvements are a far more important and realistic option for regional development than additional public investment. In many of the regions receiving the bulk of Structural Funds, further improvements in economic growth would require massive amounts of additional investment, unless the quality of government is significantly enhanced.
This paper examines the extant research progress of the common prosperity in China. Centrals on the topic of common prosperity, the author reviews the progress of Chinese common prosperity from a ...couple of perspectives: namely the relations between common prosperity and the essence of 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China; the path and measures to achieve the common prosperity; the nexus among digital economy transition, financial inclusion, household consumption, regional coordinative development and common prosperity; and finally the measurement of the current level of common prosperity. In general, the theme of common prosperity has aroused wide focus in the academic community at home and abroad. From the perspective of literature review in particular, this paper summarizes the current research progress associated with common prosperity in China.