Melissa Marselle

Dr Melissa Marselle is an environmental psychologist interested in the mental health benefits of nature and biodiversity, as well as the psychology of sustainability. Do to this, Dr Marselle's work combines theory and methods from environmental psychology, public health, and ecology.

Regarding the health benefits of nature, Dr Marselle found that people who walk in nature have better mental health than those who do not (Marselle et al., 2014), which may contribute to psychological resilience (Marselle, Warber & Irvine, 2019). Dr Marselle's work also found that the type of environment one walks in may influence one's mental health (Marselle et al., 2013; 2015).

Her work also focuses on the relationships between biodiversity and human health. Dr Marselle is the lead editor of the book Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change published with Springer (over 300K downloads). In a systematic review, she found some evidence that biodiversity contributes to better mental health and well-being (Marselle, Martens et al., 2019). Although, the theoretical foundations for these relationships need to be tested empirically (Marselle, 2019). A key research challenge is to understand the mechanisms linking biodiversity to human health (Marselle et al., 2016; Marselle et al., 2021).

Regarding the psychology of sustainability, Dr Marselle applies behaviour change theory to environmental problems (Beattie et al., 2017; Strunz et al., 2019). For example, Dr Marselle uses the Behaviour Change Wheel framework to find implementation gaps in EU policies on energy use (Wilson & Marselle 2016) and pollinator conservation (Marselle et al. 2020).