New research takes a deep dive into wild swimming

New research from scientists at SRUC and The University of Sheffield has revealed how our relationships with nature, in particular the widespread women’s wild swimming movement, can be supported through policy.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, wild swimming has taken off in popularity, according to Outdoor Swimmer magazine, with an increase of up to three times the number of people estimated to be taking part in the sport between 2019 and 2021. By 2023, 74% of wild swimmers were women.

Despite booming demand for the activity, which offers both physical and mental health benefits according to the British Medical Journal, research on what is at the heart of the rise of wild swimmers and how the activity can be supported through policy and decision-making, is sparse.

The research article, which is newly available in the BES journal People and Nature, titled ‘The Facilitating Act Framework: a new insight into cultural ecosystem services through investigating women, wild swimming and community’, makes use of an innovative framework to deepen researchers’ understanding of how the public interacts with nature and how this can inform the values behind policy making in natural spaces.

Lucy Barnard, PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield and SRUC researchers Seb O’Connor and Klaus Glenk, used the framework to study 25 women who take part in wild swimming across Scotland to analyse the complex human-nature relationships involved in the activity’s rise in popularity.

The paper identified four stylised groups of women, characterising their engagement with nature through wild swimming: “the competitive edge”; “connection-to-nature seekers”; “sharers and carers”; and the “enablers”. Each group of women had a unique reason for connecting with nature, however community consistently played an important role in their connection to wild swimming.

Seb O’Connor said: “This article introduces a framework for researchers to understand what matters to people, allowing communities to define their interactions with each other and with nature in their own ways as opposed to fitting into some pre-defined model.

In this study this was demonstrated by understanding why women go wild swimming, revealing a range of different reasons that might not be captured simply by the broad phenomenon of wild swimming, or nature providing recreational benefits. It’s important to recognise that the experience varies between different places and for different people.

As policymakers aim to reconnect people with nature and to improve access to the benefits of nature, such a framework can make sure this is done in a way that reflects what really matters to people in these interactions.”

Read the full research article here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.70077.

Discover more about research at SRUC here at www.sruc.ac.uk/research/.

Posted by SRUC on 02/07/2025