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Review
. 2023 May 30:11:1196199.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1196199. eCollection 2023.

Pet's influence on humans' daily physical activity and mental health: a meta-analysis

Catarina F Martins  1 , Jorge P Soares  1 , António Cortinhas  1 , Luís Silva  1 , Luís Cardoso  2   3 , Maria A Pires  2   3 , Maria P Mota  1
Affiliations
Review

Pet's influence on humans' daily physical activity and mental health: a meta-analysis

Catarina F Martins et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Abstract: The benefits of the human-animal bond on owners' health and quality of life have been the focus of research in recent decades. However, the results are still inconsistent. Thus, this study aims to investigate whether the presence of a pet, compared to a control group, influences daily physical activity levels and mental health using a meta-analytic method.

Methods: The PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched for all research articles that included pets as an object of study and related mental health and quality of life variables between pet owners and non-owners until April 2022. The PRISMA 2020 checklist was used, and the Downs and Back checklist was used to assess the methodological quality of the studies. Standardized mean differences and 95% confidence intervals were used to assess the difference between a group of pet owners and non-pet owners.

Results: An initial search located 11,389 studies, but only 49 studies fulfilled all requirements. Our results indicate that pets have a moderately significant positive effect on the physical activity of owners compared to non-pet owners. Among the moderating variables, the frequency of physical activity showed a highly significant effect, indicating that owners had a higher frequency of physical activity than non-owners. Moreover, our results indicate a significant impact but with a low effect size of pets on owners' mental health when compared to non-pet owners.

Conclusion: Pet ownership does not seem to influence owners' mental health, but it does influence their physical activity. Specifically, owners show a higher frequency of physical activity than non-owners.

Keywords: active lifestyle; health; pet ownership; physical activity; quality of life.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of the search strategy to include studies.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of pet influence in physical activity ownership.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot of pet influence on mental health.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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