The Role of Personality Traits in the Relationships among Social Support, Physical Activity Enjoyment, and Psychological Well-being in Outdoor Recreation

As societal pressures grow, keeping mental health in good shape is becoming a more important public health issue. Even while outdoor activities have been linked to better mental health many times, most study only looks at one item at a time, such social support, the enjoyment of physical activity, or personality attributes. Because of this, we don't know much about how these elements work together. This study fills in the gaps by looking at how personality affects the connections between social support, enjoyment of physical exercise, and mental health in people who participate in outdoor recreation.A cross-sectional survey was used to collect data from 624 people living in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. They filled out validated questionnaires that measured their personality (using the Big Five Inventory), social support, enjoyment of physical activity, and mental health. We used SPSS 27.0 and the PROCESS macro to look at the data and find the mediation and moderation effects. The findings indicated that social support was a substantial predictor of wellness of the mind, and that this was because of the joy of exercising. Also, extraversion made the link between social support and pleasure stronger, whereas neuroticism made it weaker. These results show how helpful social support may be. People who are very extraverted and people who are very neurotic have a lot of psychological well-being.This study uses ideas from personality psychology, social support theory, and self-determination theory to provide a fuller picture of how outdoor activities might improve mental health. The findings show how important it is to think about each person's personality traits when designing personalized therapies to improve mental health via outdoor physical activity.