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Health Effects of Viewing Landscapes – Landscape Types in Environmental Psychology
Abstract
The visible landscape is believed to affect human beings in many ways, including aesthetic appreciation and health and well-being. The aim of this paper is to analyse the range of landscapes used in environmental psychology studies, and the evidence of health effects related to viewing these landscapes. A literature review of publications linking landscapes and health effects was conducted. This reported evidence of health and well-being effects related to exposure to visual landscapes. The results of the review include an overview of the types of landscape used in the studies, the evidence on health effects, the methods and measures applied and the different groups of respondents. The analysis reveals a predominance of studies using only coarse categories of landscapes. Most landscape representations have been classed as “natural” or “urban”. Few studies were found to use subcategories within these groups. Generally, the natural landscapes gave a stronger positive health effect compared to urban landscapes. Urban landscapes were found to have a less positive and in some cases negative effect on health. Three main kinds of health effects have been identified in the study; short-term recovery from stress or mental fatigue, faster physical recovery from illness and long-term overall improvement on people's health and well-being.The study provides an overview of the relationships between health and landscapes arranged in an accessible format, identifying gaps in our knowledge requiring further research. The identification of quantifiable landscape attributes that affect health is seen as an important factor in enabling future landscape design to be of benefit to human health.
... Moreover, Laumann et al. [11] tested the recovery quality of different environments through questionnaires to determine the restoration people felt in specific environments. Similar studies found that natural landscapes had a stronger positive effect on health than urban landscapes [12]. Tilley et al. [13] adopted emotive mobile EEG to measure the degree of excitement, participation, and frustration of the elderly in specific urban and natural environments. ...
... Furthermore, most studies have used only rough landscape categories. Few studies have found the use of subcategories in these groups [12]. Tang et al. [3] used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to discuss the relationship between different landscape environments and human brain activity. ...
... Next, the EEG signals were segmented into contiguous 2 s windows, and any segments with the retained artifact were rejected [38]. The frequency domain features were extracted to obtain the logarithmic frequency energy values of the waves in the five frequency bands of (1-4 Hz), theta (4-8 Hz), alpha (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13), beta (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30), and gamma (>30 Hz) [39]. ...
This study proposes an integrated approach to assess the psychological and physiological responses of people in natural seasonal landscapes. The questionnaire of restoration outcomes scale (ROS), willingness to visit (WTV), cultural ecosystem services (CES) cognitive classification, and the neuroscientific technique based on electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements were applied. The effects of different landscapes on human perception were studied by comparing the EEG data of different landscape types and different seasons. The coupling relationship between EEG data and stress recovery was also examined. The results showed the following: First, there was a significant difference between the winter landscape and the summer natural landscape. Second, only the winter landscape showed significant gender differences. Third, the values of ROS and WTV in the summer landscape were greater than those in the winter landscape. Fourth, the number of CES in the summer landscape was significantly higher than that in the winter landscape, and the number of CES in water was higher than that in the forest and grassland. Thus, brain wave data and quantified values from questionnaires including ROS, WTV, and CES showed significant seasonality. Therefore, an EEG can be used as a new, more objective tool and method for landscape evaluation and planning in the future.
... Visual landscapes can affect people's aesthetic appreciation, health, and well-being [20,21]. New knowledge about the effects that visual landscapes have on human health and wellbeing may help us combat the increasing prevalence of stress-related diseases in our society [20]. ...
... Visual landscapes can affect people's aesthetic appreciation, health, and well-being [20,21]. New knowledge about the effects that visual landscapes have on human health and wellbeing may help us combat the increasing prevalence of stress-related diseases in our society [20]. According to Landis et al. [5], a main factor that contributes to pedestrian's sense of safety and comfort within a roadway corridor is personal security (i.e., the threat of assault). ...
... According to Landis et al. [5], a main factor that contributes to pedestrian's sense of safety and comfort within a roadway corridor is personal security (i.e., the threat of assault). Greenery in the landscape is shown to lower aggression, fear, stress levels, and violence compared to landscapes with no greenery [20]. As a result, increasing greenery in the landscape may also affect people's perceptions of safety and enhance their decisions to walk. ...
We investigated the effects of pedestrian environments on parents’ walking behavior, their perception of pedestrian safety, and their willingness to let their children walk to school. This study was a simulated walking environment experiment that created six different pedestrian conditions using sidewalks, landscape buffers, and street trees. We used within subjects design where participants were exposed to all six simulated conditions. Participants were 26 parents with elementary school children. Sidewalks, buffer strips, and street trees affected parents’ decisions to: walk themselves; let their children walk to school; evaluate their perception whether the simulated environment was safe for walking. We found that the design of pedestrian environments does affect people’s perceptions of pedestrian safety and their willingness to walk. The presence of a sidewalk, buffer strip, and street trees affected parents’ decision to walk, their willingness to let their children walk to school and perceived the pedestrian environment as safer for walking. The effects of trees on parents’ walking and perception of pedestrian safety are greater when there is a wide buffer rather than a narrow buffer. It was found that parents are more cautious about their children’s walking environments and safety than their own.
... They provide contact with the world beyond a building and to urban or rural environments and can play a crucial role in human well-being. There is growing evidence that merely the sight of nature can be beneficial for humans (Velarde et al., 2007). A view of a 'healing garden' or 'therapeutic landscape' from a hospital window has been shown to benefit convalescence (Bell et al., 2018;Ulrich, 1984). ...
... Existing studies are often not specific regarding the type of nature and the complexity of urban structures that people see from their windows. Only a few distinguish beyond the dichotomy of natural or human-made (Bratman et al., 2012;Velarde et al., 2007). To our knowledge, no study so far has compared the elements visible from a window to the general presence of these elements in the area that is being viewed. ...
Although window views of residential greenery are the main daily nature contact for Berlin residents, studies that examine this experience are rare but crucial to improving environmental justice and the health outcomes of green planning and policy. We analyzed 504 photos of the window views of residential greenery taken at 32 study sites for the four main Central European building types in Berlin, Germany. Visible green and structural elements were quantified from the perspective of the window and compared to presence on the ground. The window perspective is significantly distinct from the perspective at ground level. In general, lower numbers of plants and structural elements are visible from the window. In this study, we identified specific compositions of window views for different building types but also a high variability of compositions across sites. Moreover, 98 participants, including the elderly, lay people, and professionals, ranked 24 representative photos of window views according to preference. Preference has closely been linked to beneficial functions. Vegetation is perceived as a highly positive factor, trees more so than groups of shrubs. Structures for recreation are perceived positively while structures for practical use, like waste storage and parking, are perceived negatively. Accordingly, we show that residential greenery has the potential to reconcile different interests among neighbors. A multifunctional design can provide recreational space for active users as well as aesthetically pleasing window views. However, the highly individual nature of window perspectives requires individual solutions according to available size and the resident’s needs.
... Restoration studies have been criticized regarding biased selection of their stimuli toward beautiful natural scenes versus unattractive urban scenes (Karmanov & Hamel, 2008;Staats, Jahncke, Herzog, & Hartig, 2016) and there is a recent increase in studies showing restorative effects of urban settings (Bornioli, Parkhurst, & Morgan, 2018;Stigsdotter, Corazon, Sidenius, Kristiansen, & Grahn, 2017; Subiza-Pérez, Vozmediano, & San Juan, 2020). Furthermore, comparisons between urban and natural settings, especially in terms of re/instorative perceptions have usually lacked several examples of different types of natural or, especially urban settings (Karmanov & Hamel, 2008;van den Berg, Jorgensen, & Wilson, 2014;Velarde, Fry, & Tveit, 2007;Wilkie & Stavridou, 2013). We therefore purposefully decided to favor urban pictures by selecting several known, aesthetic public or residential buildings/views and industrial sites without green or blue space elements (cf. ...
... Manipulation check. Although we biased the sample toward highquality urban pictures, a repeated-measures ANOVA (Table 2) still confirmed the previously well-known result (Velarde et al., 2007) that 'ordinary nature' pictures as a group were significantly more preferred, perceived to provide stronger instorative potential as well as instoration outcome experiences, and were associated with more positive emotions and vitality than 'public/commercial/residential' urban pictures, in which all these experiences were, in turn, stronger than in 'industrial' urban pictures. This confirmed the usefulness of our initial categorization and enabled us to analyze mediation effects separately in these three different groups. ...
There is a lack of consensus on whether preference informs evaluations of urban and natural scenes as psychologically restorative or instorative, or whether instorative perceptions inform preference. Perceptions of restorative potential and outcomes without a prior stress intervention are called instorative. In two online experimental studies conducted across long (N = 140) and short (N = 110) timeframes, we show a primacy effect for instorative perceptions; that is, evaluations of the instorative benefits of a scene are better predictors of ratings of preference than preference ratings of perceived instorative benefits. This was true for both natural and urban types of scenes. We found support for perceived instoration and affective appraisals being similarly strong and independent mediators. Their relative share in affecting preference or perceived instorativeness could not be reliably differentiated. Examination of thoughts, memories, and identity elicited by viewing such scenes may further clarify relationships between environmental preference and instoration.
... Viewing photo imagery as a nature exposure proxy follows previous study designs that use nature facsimiles to test their effects [100][101][102]. Simulating live nature exposure through photos has allowed researchers to test recovery from mental fatigue [103,104], examine psychological restoration [105][106][107], and measure subjective physical and mental energy in response to scenes of natural and built environments [108]. ...
... From a pragmatic perspective, substituting imagery for live landscapes can reduce the logistical burdens of exposure comparisons and open to otherwise unattainable sociodemographic participation. Criticism of early environmental research for presenting exaggerated contrasts between natured vs. non-natured settings, e.g., inanimate urban vs. idyllic wilderness settings [102,119,120], or subjective, scenic quality assessments between older, white, mid-high SES respondents and younger, Black, low-SES respondents [114] has yielded more graduated comparisons, e.g., rural-urban settings [121,122]. Research has shown viewing both simulated and live nature to be restorative, though the greater effect was shown by live nature [123], while looking at nature imagery elicited the same psychological and physical effects of an actual nature encounter [124,125]. ...
The variability of nature and the nature construct have complicated interpretations of empirical evidence from nature-based health studies. The challenge of defining nature exposure for purposes of methodological standardization may encompass constructs beyond vegetated landcover. This study offers a new construct for defining ‘nature exposure’ that considers cultural sets and nature familiarity. Focus group discussions across the United States (N = 126) explored the concept of what constitutes the relationship to nature. The participant diversity included regions, cultural demographics, cumulative nature experience, and everyday nature exposure. Mixed methods of semi-structured discussion and a photo exercise that prompted nature connectedness allowed for data triangulation and the detection of contradictions between approaches. Individuals conceptualized nature in ways reflecting highly personal and differentiated experiences, which defied consensus toward a single nature construct. The group scoring of photo imagery showed consistent high and low levels of nature connectedness with respect to wildness and outdoor urban venues, respectively, but diverged in the assessment of nature within the built environment. Everyday nature exposure significantly differentiated how groups conceptualized and related to nature imagery. This result may indicate an unmet biophilic need among groups with low backgrounds of nature exposure. The contrasts between the discussion content and the observed reactions to nature imagery showed the value of using mixed methods in qualitative research.
... Several studies show the benefits of nature (Sullivan and Chang, 2011;Ulrich et al., 2008;Velarde et al., 2007;Groenewegen et al., 2006), particularly of green vegetation and biophilic design (Beatley and Newman, 2013;Benyus, 2008;Kellert et al., 2008;Ulrich, 1986;Wilson, 1984) in the process of psychological restoration from mental fatigue and stress (Kaplan, 2001;Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989). Such studies compare spaces with vegetation and spaces with buildings or cement (Jiang et al., 2014;Van den Berg et al., 2014;Roe and Aspinall, 2011;Van den Berg et al., 2007), determine how green landscapes contribute to people's physical and stress recovery compared to landscapes without nature (Joye and Van den Berg, 2013;Cole and Hall, 2010;Ulrich et al., 1991), and even how places with nature are more valuable than those without it (Faggi et al., 2013;White et al., 2010). ...
... The findings of this research add to previous studies that show that urban landscapes with green vegetation boost psychological restoration (Sullivan and Chang, 2011;Ulrich et al., 2008;Velarde et al., 2007;Kaplan, 1995) and that winter forest bathing therapy has a positive psychological effect on people's mood (Bielinis et al., 2018a, b). This research contributes to the existing literature by showing that winter vegetation within urban landscapes provides restoration from mental fatigue. ...
This study establishes the causal effect of winter streets’ design on people’s psychological health, specifically, restoration from stress and mental fatigue. A lab experiment was conducted to identify the effect of vegetation and brightness in winter scenarios on people’s mental restoration. Sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to three different treatments (vegetation, brightness, and control). Participants in the vegetation treatment recovered from mental fatigue quicker than those in the brightness and control groups. The findings resulting from this lab experiment inform planning principles and policies for restorative urban design by providing evidence showing how urban streets can improve people’s mental health in winter cities.
... EA, 1995EEA, , 1998) ve insan-doğa arasındaki bozulan ilişkiyi dengelemede ( Gül ve Küçük, 2001) stratejik bir öneme sahip arazi kullanım şeklidir. Açık-yeşil alanlar pek çok farklı işlev üstlenmekte ve bu işlevler ölçüsünde önem kazanmaktadırlar. Kentsel yaşamda açık-yeşil alanlar; kentlinin uzun vadeli ruhsal ve fiziksel iyileşmesini sağlamaktan (Velarde et. al., 2007;Qin et al.., 2013) kentsel biyoçeşitliliğin korunmasına ve geliştirilmesine (Kattwinkel et al., 2011), oksijen üretiminden (Jo, 2002; La Rosa, 2014) ısı adalarını ve yüzey akışı azaltmaya, hava kalitesini düzenlemeye (Bowler et al., 2010;Depietri et al., 2012;Manes et al., 2012;Sander and Zhao, 2015), gürültü kirliliğini azaltmaya (Patha ...
... Además, se vio que los encuestados de la Facultad de Psicología fueron los que más altamente valoraron la contribución que sobre su bienestar humano tienen tanto el disfrute estético de los paisajes como las actividades recreativas y de ocio. Este resultado no debería de sorprender, pues son precisamente los profesores y estudiantes de esta facultad los que −por norma general− mejor conocen los efectos beneficiosos que sobre el bienestar tienen tanto los paisajes naturales y espacios verdes (Corraliza, 2000, Bertram & Rehdanz, 2015Velarde et al. 2007) como la realización de actividades de ocio y recreo al aire libre (Pretty et al. 2007). ...
El propósito principal de este proyecto es mejorar el conocimiento de los beneficios ambientales que los espacios verdes del campus de Cantoblanco de la UAM proporcionan al bienestar de la comunidad universitaria. Para ello, el proyecto ha establecido los siguientes objetivos específicos: Identificar, cartografiar y evaluar cuatro servicios de regulación: i) la escorrentía y recarga de acuíferos; ii) el secuestro y almacenamiento de carbono, iii) la regulación de la temperatura local; y iv) la purificación del aire y eliminación de contaminantes. Realizar una estimación de la huella de carbono y de la huella hídrica de la UAM. Identificar, cartografiar y evaluar de forma participativa e interactiva tres servicios culturales: i) el disfrute estético de los paisajes; ii) las actividades recreativas y de ocio; y iii) la educación ambiental. Difundir los principales resultados del proyecto a toda la Comunidad Universitaria.
... Research studies have found that viewing natural or artificial (painted) landscapes would have significant psychological and physiological impacts on a human's well-being (Velarde et al., 2007). As landscape paintings are the focus of this paper, it could play an alternative source for human enjoyment with nature. ...
This study is focused on landscape paintings’ characteristics throughout history. It starts with primitive cave paintings passed through the ancient civilisations, then followed by the main art movements and styles and ends with the contemporary style landscape paintings. Future prospects and expectations for landscape representations were also considered. It was found that landscape representation has been the focus for most artists because of its link to their normal lives. In the primitive caves, illustrations of plants and animals were found covering caves’ walls. Landscape backgrounds were used in the ancient Egyptian civilisation and lost its significance in the Greece style to reappear with the Roman artists with special concern and perspective. The Renaissance era witnessed more progress in landscape paintings’ subjects and perspective. Baroque paintings initiated the focus on independent landscape paintings to be crystalised in the Romantic paintings and later on in the impressionists’ art works using distinctive painting techniques. The modernists approved landscape topic in their paintings to apply their unique techniques, whereas the contemporary landscape paintings have adopted abstract and free methods in employing various materials and colours. It is obvious that the landscape subject has been employed throughout all stages of art history because it is the key segment of their environment and life not only because of its aesthetic values. Realistic landscape representation in visual art and design is expected to progress in abundance in the near and far future as many people due to the pandemic circumstances have been deprived from naturally experiencing landscapes causing mental and health difficulties. Keywords: Prehistoric period, ancient civilisations, Renaissance, Baroque, romantic.
... Exposure to natural environments contributes to the improvement of human health, which has been proven by a variety of theories and experiments since the 1980s, such as stress recovery theory and attention restoration theory [1][2][3][4][5]. Following that, therapeutic landscapes have been widely used as an adjuvant treatment in hospitals, nursing homes, and other professional medical institutions in the developed countries in Europe and America [6]. ...
This study aims to examine the impacts of community gardening on the daily life of residents and the management organisation of pandemic prevention in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a major public health scourge in 2020. The research team applied a participatory action research approach to work with residents to design and implement the Seeding Plan, a contactless community gardening program. The authors carried out a study to compare the everyday conditions reflecting residents’ mental health of the three subject groups during the pandemic: the participants of the Seeding Plan (Group A), the non-participants living in the same communities that had implemented the Seeding Plan (Group B), and the non-participants in other communities (Group C). According to the results, group A showed the best mental health among the three; Group B, positively influenced by seeding activities, was better than Group C. The interview results also confirmed that the community connections established through gardening activities have a significant impact on maintaining a positive social mentality under extraordinary circumstances. From this, the study concluded that gardening activities can improve people’s mental health, effectively resist negative impacts, and it is a convenient tool with spreading influence on the entire community, so as to support the collective response to public health emergencies in a bottom-up direction by the community.
... Our first study, addressing RQ1, asked: does exposure to static nature stimuli increase psychological restoration and social wellbeing when compared to static urban stimuli? We found beneficial effects of static nature images when compared directly to static urban images consistent with other lab-based studies [4,37,40,41]. We found increases in perceptions of general belonging as well as decreases in loneliness post-exposure to static nature images, as well as improved subjective mood (i.e., hedonic tone). ...
It is well-evidenced that exposure to natural environments increases psychological restoration as compared to non-natural settings, increasing our ability to recover from stress, low mood, and mental fatigue and encouraging positive social interactions that cultivate social cohesion. However, very few studies have explored how the inclusion of people within a given environment—either urban or natural settings—affect restorative health outcomes. We present three laboratory-based studies examining, first, the effect of nature vs. urban scenes, and second, investigating nature ‘with’ vs. ‘without’ people—using static and moving imagery—on psychological restoration and social wellbeing. Our third study explores differences between urban and natural settings both with vs. without people, using video stimuli to understand potential restorative and social wellbeing effects. Outcome measures across all studies included perceived social belonging, loneliness, subjective mood, and perceived restorativeness. Studies 1 and 2 both used a within group, randomized crossover design. Study 1 (n = 45, mean age = 20.7) explored static imagery of environmental conditions without people; findings were consistent with restorative theories showing a positive effect of nature exposure on all outcome measures. Study 2 compared nature scenes with vs. without people (n = 47, mean age = 20.9) and we found no significant differences on our outcome measures between either social scenario, though both scenarios generated positive wellbeing outcomes. Study 3, conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, employed an independent group design with subjects randomly assigned to one of four conditions; an urban vs. nature setting, with vs. without people. We explored the effect of moving imagery on psychological restoration (n = 200, mean age = 35.7) and our findings showed no impact on belonging, loneliness, or mood between conditions, but did show that—regardless of the inclusion of people—the nature settings were more restorative than the urban. There were no differences in psychological restoration between nature conditions with vs. without people. We discuss the implications for restorative environment research exploring social-environmental interactions.
... Burton, Mitchell and Stride [156] found a green view from living spaces enhance general wellbeing. Velarde, Fry, and Tveit [157] reported that viewing green landscapes, as compared to urban ones, improve short-term recovery from stress or mental fatigue, faster physical recovery from illness, and enhance long-term overall health and wellbeing. Kaplan [158] found that the ability to view natural views from home (including gardens and flowers) increased neighbourhood satisfaction. ...
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was growing interest in designing healthier neighbourhoods. Adopting this perspective brings attention to how conditions in neighbourhoods (directly and indirectly) affect their inhabitants’ physical health and mental wellbeing. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how to alleviate such conditions through integrated interventions designed to operate specifically at the neighbourhood scale. To address this gap, this paper introduces the term “unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome” (UNS). The conceptual clarity and practical utility offered by using this term are critically examined. The paper contains a rigorous review and critical analysis of academic and grey literature on what are held to be the relationships between key features of the built environment and people’s health and wellbeing. It also examines literature offering advice on how urban designers should make neighbourhoods healthier. It illustrates the complexity of the range of issues involved and the complicated web of top down, bottom up and middling out actors that need to be involved in making decisions about them. Despite having inherent weaknesses, the term “unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome” is judged to be useful. It illustrates how seemingly separate issues operate in urban design, promoted for tackling specific symptoms of ill health, need to be addressed jointly through an integrated programme of parallel work streams operating at the neighbourhood scale. The paper is innovative in identifying the wide cluster of symptoms used to describe unhealthy neighbourhoods in the literature as being a “syndrome”. Its significance lies in its injunction that this syndrome needs to be tackled through integrated streams of remedial action drawing on experience and expertise that lie beyond those offered by the traditional membership of urban design teams.
... For visual image content, previous studies have shown that landscape preference is focused on environmental attributes (Hartig and Staats, 2006). Researchers have primarily applied the significant difference "dichotomy" comparison method to explore the positive influences of urban green land diversity on rehabilitation effects, such as comparisons between the natural environment and urban streets (Velarde and Fry, 2007;Golding et al., 2018). However, a more refined classification method can be used for groups in different mood states to positively explore the rehabilitation effects of nature (van den Berg and Jorgensen, 2014). ...
The interaction between man and nature causes people to have different preferences for their surrounding environment, and pleasant landscapes can bring both physical and mental benefits to people. Previous studies have demonstrated the relationship between moods and landscape preferences, and this study sought to explore the landscape preferences of college students under different moods. A total of 1,034 students participated in the survey, recovering 1,022 valid questionnaires. The Profile of Mood States (POMS) scale was used to evaluate the mental status of each respondent. The study on landscape characteristics proceeded in two steps (comprising four gradients): landscape naturalness and landscape visual openness. The research results show that under natural landscape conditions, college students in a fatigued state have a greater preference for the second-gradient (higher naturalness) landscape environment; under the conditions of landscape visual openness, college students in an indignant state have a greater preference for the second-gradient (relatively private) landscapes. These findings have significance for exploring the rehabilitation function of landscape architecture and have a guiding role for future landscape design.
... Benefits associated with urban green spaces include; the improvement of mental health (Kuo, 2001), amplification of cognitive functions (Berman et al., 2008), and alleviate stress and fatigue (Harting et al., 2014). Studies on the human-nature relationship have reported a positive outcome on health matters (Maas et al., 2006;Velarde et al., 2007). City dwellers face a triple health burden that comprises of obesity (Flegal et al., 2010), respiratory diseases and cardiovascular diseases (Vorster, 2002). ...
This paper seeks to examine how the perception and use of Nairobi’s urban green spaces (UGS) have been impacted by the Covid- 19 pandemic. The question of how the current pandemic and the resulting government policies will affect urban green spaces has remained elusive. Similarly, the relationship between public health crises and urban green spaces has not been well integrated in the current literature. This paper identifies a nexus between government response to the Covid-19 pandemic and (Un) sustainability of UGS. The authors further reflect on the potential role UGS could play to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic. Findings of the study show that UGS in Nairobi have not been fully exploited to provide citizens with sufficient access to green spaces yet as the pandemic has shown these spaces could significantly improve physical and mental health for the citizens as well as act as logistical areas for humanitarian activities during a pandemic. The paper therefore concludes with policy recommendations that can give rise to short and long term reforms in the provision and management of UGS.
... Beyond providing tourists and artists a place to seek out, landscape scenicness has also been found to improve people's quality of life. Velarde et al. (2007) reviewed literature covering the relationship between health and landscape beauty, and found that observing scenic landscapes is associated with a reduction in stress, improved attention capacity, better recovery from illnesses, a feeling of general well-being, and positive improvements to one's mood. Grinde and Patil (Sep. ...
The environment where we live and recreate can have a significant effect on our well-being. More beautiful landscapes have considerable benefits to both health and quality of life. When we chose where to live or our next holiday destination, we do so according to some perception of the environment around us. In a way, we value nature and assign an ecosystem service to it. Landscape aesthetics, or scenicness, is one such service, which we consider in this paper as a collective perceived quality. We present a deep learning model called ScenicNet for the large-scale inventorisation of landscape scenicness from satellite imagery. We model scenicness with an interpretable deep learning model and learn a landscape beauty estimator based on crowdsourced scores derived from more than two hundred thousand landscape images in the United Kingdom. Our ScenicNet model learns the relationship between land cover types and scenicness by using land cover prediction as an interpretable intermediate task to scenicness regression. It predicts landscape scenicness and land cover from the Corine Land Cover product concurrently, without compromising the accuracy of either task. In addition, our proposed model is interpretable in the sense that it learns to express preferences for certain types of land covers in a manner that is easily understandable by an end-user. Our semantic bottleneck also allows us to further our understanding of crowd preferences for landscape aesthetics.
... An important external factor is vicinity or exposure to surrounding greenness and outdoor blue spaces, such as lakes (105,191,192). A large and steadily increasing number of studies demonstrate the health-promoting effects of being in and interacting with nature [e.g., (153,154)], of viewing natural landscapes [e.g., (193)], or even listing to natural sounds [e.g., (194)]. Increased exposure to environmental greenness has been linked to lower psychological distress, depression and anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia incidence (105,157,195); as well as to slower cognitive decline in middle-aged individuals (191); and improved self-reported mental health in urban settings [see (196)]. ...
Humankind is confronted with progressing climate change, pollution, environmental degradation, and/or destruction of the air, soil, water, and ecosystems. The climate and environmental crisis is probably one of the greatest challenges in the history of humankind. It not only poses a serious current and continuing threat to physical health, but is also an existing and growing hazard to the mental health of millions of people worldwide. This synergy of literature provides a current summary of the adverse mental health impacts of the climate and environmental crisis from the perspective of Clinical Psychology. Furthermore, it presents potential underlying processes, including biological, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and social pathways. The existing data suggest that the climate and environmental crisis not only acts as a direct stressor, but can also exert a detrimental impact on the various pathways, with the potential to amplify an individual's biopsychosocial vulnerability to develop mental ill-health. This is a call for an increased investigation into this emerging research field of Clinical Ecopsychology by clinical psychologists and other researchers.
... Overall, we have sampled findings from three types of studies. There are now multiple reviews of research attesting to the impact of exposure to nature that encompass the diverse types of studies and beneficial effects in relation to mental health (e.g., Bratman et al. 2019;Frumkin et al. 2017;Velarde et al. 2007;Weeland et al. 2019). The many beneficial effects of contact with nature have included improved mood, happiness, subjective well-being, sleep, and cognitive functioning (as reflected in memory and paying attention), as well as reduced distress, feelings of isolation, ruminative thinking, depression, and anxiety. ...
Human contact with nature is more important than ever before considering the global confinement brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic , the increased urbanization of society, and increased rates of mental disorders and threats to human well-being. This article conveys the importance of contact with nature from three perspectives: historical, sociocultural, and scientific. These perspectives convey the many ways in which contact with nature is essential to human life, the multiple ways in which this is expressed , and the broad range of benefits this has. The case for preserving the natural environment continues to be made in light of the dangers of climate change, the deleterious effects of pollution, and the importance of habitats. We add to the case by underscoring how human well-being has depended on contact with natural environments and how the need for this contact is more salient now than ever before. o Human contact with nature now is a luxury or pastime for many, which of course is odd given our evolutionary origins. We evolved completely in nature in virtually every possible way for food, clothing, living quarters , but also walking, socializing, and playing sports. We need not go back to the beginning of human evolution. Even within our current time frame of merely the past two thousand years, cities often were closely connected with nature as evident in the work of hunter-gatherers, farmers , miners, fishermen, and foresters. Unfortunately, contemporary life throughout the world has helped us lose sight of our origins and the many roles that contact with nature can play in our lives. For example, currently approximately 55 percent of the world's population lives in urban areas and this is expected to increase to 68 percent by 2050 (United Nations 2019). Opportunities for employment, education, culture , and health care are among the motives for moving to urban areas. Urban planning and development of cities often include parks and
... It is natural to experience this effect caused by different mechanisms. Numerous studies have focused on the effects of listening to nature sounds (Lechtzin et al., 2010), watching natural landscapes (Velarde et al., 2007) and sunlight (Seidler, 1959) on human psychology. Studies (Barton & Pretty, 2010;Bratman et al., 2015;Cox et al., 2017) have shown that people experience some emotional, cognitive, and physiological responses in their approach to natural landscapes. ...
People have different moods that vary in different spaces, and the “light” is one of the most important factors affecting the mood of people in an indoor environment. Conducted with 50 volunteers using a church design in the virtual reality environment, the study aims to test individuals’ mood changes in the designed church according to natural and artificial light conditions. In the study, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule mood scale and the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire were used, in addition to the Likert-type Architectural Liking Scale. A significant correlation was found between the architectural liking scores and the difference in the average positive moods scores in the spaces with natural lighting and artificial lighting. It was also noted that the rate of positive mood reported by female participants was higher than male participants in the study.
... One type of engagement is visual. There is increasing evidence that the indirect use of UGS by viewing greenery, whether a view of outdoor vegetation or indoor plants, or even a window view of distant scenery, can provide health benefits (Chang et al., 2020;Lottrup, Grahn & Stigsdotter, 2013;Grinde & Patil, 2009;Velarde, Fry & Tveit, 2007). Such health benefits have been widely applied in our daily lives, for example, through horticultural therapy. ...
The health benefits of urban green spaces (UGS) are important considerations in the design of urban environments. Researchers have analysed how the quantity of UGS impacts health outcomes, but less work has quantified the relative health benefits of different components of UGS provision. We examined the associations of
different indicators of UGS provision with self-reported mental and general health based on a national representative household survey (n = 1000) in Singapore. We quantified three quantitative attributes of UGS
(vegetation cover, canopy cover, park area) using Geographic Information System (GIS) data and measured
visual greenness using the Green View Index (GVI) based on Google Street View panoramic images. We measured
the subjective attributes of UGS, namely, usage quality and quantity of UGS within a 400 m circular buffer zone
of residences using the survey. Among all the UGS indicators at the 400 m scale, only canopy cover and perceived
usage quality were significantly associated with positive mental health, whereas none of the UGS indicators were
related to general health. For visual greenness at different distance scales, there was a significant relationship
between the indicator calculated by the sum of GVI at a 100 m scale and mental health. Canopy cover at a 400 m
scale had a stronger correlation with mental health than perceived usage quality of nearby UGS and visual
greenness at a 100 m scale. The findings highlight the importance of measuring both objective and subjective
attributes of UGS provision and provide useful information for urban greening.
... Non-specialist visitors to the region surrounding the study area and other national and natural parks also make an economic contribution: hunters and sportspeople, or those with a more generalist interest in nature and landscape-based leisure activities. They do not travel to protected regions specifically to see avian scavengers, but enjoy the general psychological, physical, and social benefits of being in contact with nature (Velarde et al., 2007;Abraham et al., 2010;Hausmann et al., 2020). That said, such visitors would likely profit from some of the direct and indirect non-material contributions provided by avian scavengers and appreciate their positive added value. ...
Nature's contributions to people (NCP) are fundamental to human well-being. In particular, non-material NCP, defined as effects on personal perspectives which enhance people's quality of life, are currently the most abstract and least well-defined NCP. Avian scavengers are a globally threatened guild that plays a key role in our society but currently only valued for their NCP of disease control and carcass removal. We describe the first economic valuation of the recreational and educational experiences brought by avian scavenger-based tourism in Spain, concretely, at vulture supplementary feeding sites (SFS) in the Pyrenees and their important contribution to the incomes of the local human population. Between February 2018 and January 2020, we collected information on the management and characteristics of 53 (c. 80%) of the Pyrenean SFS using telephone interviews and questionnaires. We estimated that photography and avian scavenger-watching at SFS produce an average of US $4.90 ± 2.67 million annually, including US $2.53 ± 1.36 million in direct economic benefits to the local population. Using a conservative economic approach, this study is one of only a few to value some of the important non-material contribution provided by avian scavengers to our society. Our study also suggests that further research on non-material NCP provided by avian scavengers at SFS is needed. Finally, we discuss the delicate balance between recreational experiences arising from wildlife-based tourism and biodiversity conservation, contrasting the contribution of SFS to the income of local human populations against the problems they raise for vulture conservation.
... It has also typically represented what people take to be "nature" in a limited set of contexts, with a particular emphasis on recreational activities (Hartig et al., 2011). At the same time, it has represented "nature" in a coarse manner, for example as green space, without attending to more specific ecological characteristics of the natural environment, including the particulars of the funga, flora and fauna in a given setting (e.g., Velarde et al., 2007;Markevych et al., 2017;Marselle et al., 2021). ...
Many call for a broad approach to valuation of nature’s contribution to people, one that provides a contextualized understanding of what may be experienced as a value in different cultures, groups and settings. In the present paper we address contributions of nature to psychological well-being as realized through restorative processes during encounters with wildlife. Although restorative benefits of nature experience have received much consideration, sparse attention has been given to the role of the presence or absence of different animals in the settings investigated. The presence of a liked species may increase appreciation for and engagement with a natural setting, but fear of encountering some species may counter the desire to visit a setting with otherwise high restorative quality. This paper proposes a psychological framework for understanding how wildlife may contribute to or hinder people’s opportunities to restore in local natural settings. The framework addresses the transaction between the individual and their surroundings, making use of an appraisal theory of emotion and theories about the restorative benefits of nature experience. We focus upon encounters in landscapes shared by humans and wildlife, and we elaborate on our reasoning with scenarios from Sweden involving local people’s appraisal of wolves and roe deer. An integrated understanding of the psychological processes at work would facilitate communication and decision-making about the contribution of wildlife in nature conservation and management.
... (Maranhão, 1985). Com o intuito comparativo, também foi compilado inventário internacional contendo conjunto similar das variáveis BAC até aqui consideradas, com proveniências selecionadas de: fontes termais ("hot springs"), águas minerais ("minerals"), subterrâneas ("groundwaters"), engarrafadas ("bottled"), de SPA ("healing", "curative" ou "medicine") ou potáveis ("drinking" (Velarde et al., 2007). ...
BRAZILIAN FOUNTAINS, BIOLOGICALLY ACTIVE COMPOUNDS.
The natural surrounds and resources wrapping hot or mineral springs belong to
sustainable matter involving governance and strategic planning of public health,
environment, welfare, tourism and mining sectors. Noted it, through the current
Brazilian policy demand: social thermalism/hydrotherapy/crenotherapy selected like
complementary alternative medicine (CAM) by health ministry law MS 971/2006
(PNPIC), hydro-thermal therapy qualifying DNPM (MME Ordinance 127/2011 and
MME 337/2002), health and wellness tourism formally oriented by tourism ministry
and environmental management groundwater resources (Resolution MME /
CONAMA 396/2008 and MME / CNRH 107/2010). Whereas as fresh potable
reserves or potential mineral aquatic strategic deposits, the main biologically active
components (BAC) were identified, with their minimum levels needed to related
health benefits. Similar to conventional mining prospection, these “cut off grade”
detection, at natural occurrences from Brazil, was the major goal in this work. The
bibliographic systematic review allowed identify the main bioactive substances (BAC)
related to springs sources of elements enougth or proven as health beneficial and at
which indications. Wards after, it was performed a georeferenced database with
these same variables (BAC) from Brazilian springs. Overlays all through thematic
maps assisted in geographical and geological evaluations, whereas, at the end,
statistical comparisons filtered target selection at all. The total 60 possible natural
BAC and its minimum values for efficacy globally reviewed and established were
detected at least one BAC occurrence from 703 mineral springs at 525 Brazilian
cities. The arguments utilized were important in demonstrating the abundant and
diverse existence of this endowment, where its potential health applications are
virtually unknown today.
... There is another approach similar to this where the main health aspects were utilized through exposure to the scene and appreciation for the aesthetic aspects related by reducing levels of stress and psychological fatigue, improving the ability to pay attention, recover faster, and strengthening the physical aspect for the elderly, in addition to strengthening People's well-being, behavioral changes that improve mood and general well-being. [17] Communication, air quality, noise and nature of events are also sensitive to change in natural seasons, open outdoor spaces and appropriate shades. Environmental aspect -Reducing stress and mental fatigue -Improving attention to the ability to recover from illness -enhance the physical integrity of the elderly -Behavioral changes that improve mood and general wellbeing Landscape exposure and aesthetic appreciation (healthy aspect) Velarde et al. 2007 9 For the purpose of extracting the theoretical framework for the role of landscape in achieving aging in space for the elderly in multi-story housing projects, and through reviewing the studies, The research found the following: 1-The requirements for aging in the place are fulfilled by: ...
The world is experiencing an increase in population leading to an increase in the percentage of people over the age of 65 years, so the aging of the population will not be confine to developed countries only, but also to developing countries. During the next five decades, more than 80% of the elderly will live in civilized cities and regions, due to the direct impact of urban areas on the quality of life for older people to spend most of their time in their local neighborhoods, and therefore they are sensitive to aspects related to the urban environment surrounding them. In order to assist the elderly to practice their daily lives in an appropriate way and support their aging in the place, the research will focus on the elderly in multi-story housing projects and how to work on, connecting them with nature within these complexes and help them in the successful completion of their daily activities. To achieve this the concept of (aging in place), will be addressed and given the role of landscape that can play in support of aging in place for the elderly. So the research came to study the possibility of achieving this concept in multi-story housing projects, where the concept of (aging in place), and the possibility of achieving it by landscape. It will be studied through an extensive literature review for addressing a holistic theoretical framework for indicators related to landscape and how they contribute to achieve aging in the place at the level of multi-story housing projects. Finally, the research reach the locally possibility of benefiting from that framework and diagnosing the obstacles to achieve those possibilities to provide landscape that can assist the elderly in multi-story housing projects achieve ageing well in a convenient and comfortable place for this important segment of the society.
... For this reason, for some years now, urban planners, engineers and architects have been trying to design urban parks to reduce individuals' mental fatigue and restore a positive mood [1]. To this aim, most studies have focused primarily on health promotion in natural settings [6,7,8], attempting to build more or less large green areas within urban contexts. Most of these attempts have been limited mainly to visual aspects, namely the addition of natural or architectural elements that recall water and vegetation [9,10,11]. ...
Assessing the emotional impact that sounds have on individuals is of fundamental importance. In fact, individuals might choose a particular environment, such as a square or a green urban park, by also considering how positively or negatively the acoustic characteristics of that environment make them feel.
However, at the moment, no questionnaire allows to reliably and clearly assess the emotional salience of sounds; that is how positively and negatively a sound is perceived by individuals. Therefore, in the present work, we developed and compared two different questionnaires (A and B) focused on how the sound is affectively assessed (e.g. pleasant, calm) and how it makes people feel (e.g. happy, sad, energetic). The two questionnaires differ mainly in their first part, where Questionnaire A was built starting from the circumplex model of soundscape perception, whereas Questionnaire B was created by focusing on the emotional dimension of sounds. The questionnaires were administered to two different groups of participants. Principal component analysis and reliability analysis showed that Questionnaire B was able to capture more reliably and clearly the Positive and Negative dimensions of the sound than questionnaire A. The implications of these results are discussed in light of recent indications about the need to assess in a clear, reliable and straightforward way the impact of the sound environment on humans.
... We encourage the use of these validated images to promote the use of fMRI technology to discern neurological responses to better understand the effects of nature. For nature studies, controlling for conditions to assess and accurately quantify the results can be difficult to do in the natural environment (Velarde et al., 2007); fMRI studies offer an opportunity to alleviate the difficulties in the quantification of subjective results. Lack of available validated images from fMRI studies encumbers reproducible science (Eklund et al., 2016;Munafò et al., 2017;Poldrack et al., 2017) which limits scientific progress in understanding the benefits of nature. ...
This study fills a void in the literature by both validating images of nature for use in future research experiments and examining which characteristics of these visual stimuli are found to be most representative of nature. We utilized a convenience sample of university students to assess 129 different nature images on which best represented nature. Participants ( n = 40) viewed one image per question ( n = 129) and were asked to rate images using a 5-point Likert scale, with the anchors “best represents nature” (5) and “least represents nature” (1). Average ratings across participants were calculated for each image. Canopies, mountains, bodies of water, and unnatural elements were identified as semantic categories of interest, as well as atmospheric perspectives and close-range views. We conducted the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and the ordered logistic regression analyses to identify semantic categories highly representative of nature, controlling for the presence/absence of other semantic categories. The results showed that canopies, bodies of water, and mountains were found to be highly representative of nature, whereas unnatural elements and close-range views were inversely related. Understanding semantic categories most representative of nature is useful in developing nature-centered interventions in behavioral performance research and other neuroimaging modalities. All images are housed in an online repository and we welcome the use of the final 10 highly representative nature images by other researchers, which will hopefully prompt and expedite future examinations of nature across multiple research formats.
... The layout of the environment, including the type, composition, and configuration of these attributes may affect attention restoration, emotions, preferences, cognition, stress, and so on (Gillis & Gatersleben, 2015). Moreover, Velarde, Fry, and Tveit (2007) suggested that it is important to identify the key elements in landscapes that provide the most health benefits. ...
People release stress in urban environments by experiencing green areas, such as parks, grasslands, and areas with trees and hedges. For over 30 years, increasing studies have depicted the psychological and physiological health benefits of experiencing nature. However, recently, people have been staying in concrete environments without green spaces in their daily lives, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, not only causing social isolation but also contributing to health problems. Biophilic attributes in built environments might improve people's connection to nature and provide health benefits and influence landscape design applications. To confirm this, the present study took photos in urban green spaces and imported them into Google Vision AI to label their biophilic attributes and to predict the tradition environmental Qi in the space. The study found that natural labels, such as "tree, plant, grass, and park" significantly influenced people's preference for a space, its tradition environmental qi, and people's experiences of recovery and reflection. However, urban labels, such as "building, architecture, city, and house" were significantly negatively related to the same psychological outcomes. Using AI to define biophilic labels could optimize the psychological benefits of designed spaces and provide a new view for related landscape design work.
... Terapeutyczne oddziaływanie terenów zielonych obejmuje umożliwienie regeneracji psychicznej i fizycznej, promocję aktywności fizycznej i kontak-tów społecznych. Dla każdego z tych rodzajów oddziaływania wykonano szereg badań, które potwierdziły terapeutyczne właściwości kontaktu z naturą w przestrzeni terenów zielonych (Cooper-Marcus, Francis, 1995; Kaplan, 1995;Kahn, 1999;Pretty et al., 2005;Velarde, 2007;Harting et al., 2008;Mass, 2008;Kuo, 2010). Miejsca święte umożliwiają oddziaływanie w każdym z tych rodzajów. ...
STRESZCZENIE W artykule zaprezentowano różne wzory projektowania sacrum w zielonych przestrzeniach publicznych, jak również Uniwersalny wzorzec parku o właściwościach terapeutycznych. Jako przykład omówiono kompleks zielonych przestrzeni publicznych w Wejherowie, utworzony przez Kalwarię Wejherowską i Park im. A. Majkowskiego.
ABSTRACT This paper presents various patterns of design of the Sacred Places along with the Universal Pattern of Design for Therapeutic Parks. Second part of this paper presents assessment of therapeutic qualities of public open green areas in Wejherowo, composed of The Calvary of Wejherowo and Public Park named after A. Majkowski.
... However, most of the studies on green space health benefits have been conducted in Western countries, while only a few studies have been conducted in Chinese settings and against the Chinese cultural background [17]. For example, an extensive systematic review [18] included mainly European, Scandinavian, and US-based studies, with no studies in Chinese settings. Considering that preferences are closely related to restorativeness and that China's urbanization has impacted human health and well-being by isolating human beings from the natural environment and through the pressure and anxiety brought by urban life [19], it is becoming increasingly important to know how to design UGS in Chinese circumstances to improve public preference for it, thereby encouraging more visits to UGS and improving restorative perception simultaneously. ...
Recent research has demonstrated that landscape design intensity impacts individuals’ landscape preferences, which may influence their eye movement. Due to the close relationship between restorativeness and landscape preference, we further explore the relationships between design intensity, preference, restorativeness and eye movements. Specifically, using manipulated images as stimuli for 200 students as participants, the effect of urban green space (UGS) design intensity on landscapes’ preference, restorativeness, and eye movement was examined. The results demonstrate that landscape design intensity could contribute to preference and restorativeness and that there is a significant positive relationship between design intensity and eye-tracking metrics, including dwell time percent, fixation percent, fixation count, and visited ranking. Additionally, preference was positively related to restorativeness, dwell time percent, fixation percent, and fixation count, and there is a significant positive relationship between restorativeness and fixation percent. We obtained the most feasible regression equations between design intensity and preference, restorativeness, and eye movement. These results provide a set of guidelines for improving UGS design to achieve its greatest restorative potential and shed new light on the use of eye-tracking technology in landscape perception studies.
... Uhich [8] studied architectural spaces with and without vegetation and noted that people have positive physiological and psychological responses to environments with vegetation. Green space improves the physical and mental health of residents, who benefit via increased attention, reduced stress and anxiety, fatigue recovery, improved mood levels and increased well-being [9][10][11]. Peter [12] demonstrated in a walking experiment that green space is an environment that improves emotions and that people who enter a green space experience lower frustration and higher engagement and excitement. ...
Citation: Zeng, C.; Lin, W.; Li, N.; Wen, Y.; Wang, Y.; Jiang, W.; Zhang, J.; Zhong, H.; Chen, X.; Luo, W.; et al. Electroencephalography (EEG)-Based Neural Emotional Response to the Vegetation Density and Integrated Sound Environment in a Green Space. Forests 2021, 12, 1380. https:// Abstract: Emotion plays an important role in physical and mental health. Green space is an environment conducive to physical and mental recovery and influences human emotions through visual and auditory stimulation. Both the visual environment and sound environment of a green space are important factors affecting its quality. Most of the previous relevant studies have focused solely on the visual or sound environment of green spaces and its impacts. This study focused on the combination of vegetation density (VD) and integrated sound environment (ISE) based on neural emotional evaluation criteria. VD was used as the visual variable, with three levels: high (H), moderate (M) and low (L). ISE was used as the sound variable, with four levels: low-decibel natural and low-decibel artificial sounds (LL), low-decibel natural and high-decibel artificial sounds (LH), high-decibel natural and low-decibel artificial sounds (HL) and high-decibel natural and high-decibel artificial sounds (HH). These two variables were combined into 12 unique groups. A total of 360 volunteer college students were recruited and randomly assigned to the 12 groups (N = 30). All 12 groups underwent the same 5 min high-pressure learning task (pretest baseline), followed by a 5 min audiovisual recovery (posttest). Six indicators of neural emotion (engagement, excitement, focus, interest, relaxation and stress) were dynamically measured by an Emotiv EPOC X device during the pretest and posttest. Analysis of covariance was used to determine the main and coupled effects of the variables. (1) VD and ISE have significant effects on human neural emotions. In moderate-and high-VD spaces, artificial sound levels may have a positive effect on excitement. (2) A higher VD is more likely to result in excitatory neural emotion expression. (3) Low-VD and high-VD spaces have a higher degree of visual continuity. Both extremely low and extremely high VDs result in a higher expression of stressful emotions than observed for a moderate VD. (4) High-decibel artificial sounds are more likely to attract attention, possibly because artificial sounds are easier to recognize than natural sounds. However, when both the natural and artificial sounds are low, it is difficult to induce higher tones, and the lower the artificial sound decibel level, the easier it is to relax. Additionally, under the influence of an ISE, attention recovery and stress recovery may be negatively correlated. The results show that an appropriate combination of VD and ISE can improve the health benefits of a green space and thus the well-being of visitors.
... Participants exposed to neutral and fitspiration contents showed a significant growth in positive mood also, although lower than in the group exposed to body-positive images. Growth in exposure to neutral content is consistent with Cohen et al. (2019a) and Velarde et al. (2007), whereas growth in exposure to fitspiration content is in contrast with the findings in the literature (Griffiths and Stefanovski, 2019). Given that participants did not just follow the assigned profile but were also asked to follow the most popular fitspiration hashtags, they may have been exposed to a whole range of other content based on those hashtags (e.g. ...
The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of daily exposure to body-positive and fitspiration Instagram posts on young women’s mood, body satisfaction, and appearance comparison tendency. One hundred and twenty-two young Italian women (Mage = 22.29 ± 2.26 years) were randomly assigned to three different conditions of daily exposure on Instagram (i.e., body-positive, fitspiration and neutral content) and followed with an experience sampling method over a period of 28 consecutive days. Comparisons between groups were performed via multilevel regression modelled as a linear growth model. Results showed that daily exposure to body-positive images was associated with the highest rates of growth of positive mood and body satisfaction. Daily exposure to fitspiration images was associated with the highest rates of growth of negative mood and appearance comparison. In conclusion, the body-positive movement may be considered in interventions aimed at improving young women’s body image. Fitspiration content on Instagram should be deemed inappropriate.
... Blue space is particularly important for mental recovery and building mental health, while green space can have a positive impact on older people's social activities. As such, research on the therapeutic nature of such spaces is often focused on spatial environments such as natural landscapes, landscape gardens, residential courtyards, and built environments [32][33][34]. ...
Under the influence of economic, environmental, and social structural changes, urban space expands and contracts to varying degrees and the everyday urban landscape changes in response. Over the past 20 years, a large number of cities in China have undergone a brief but rapid urban expansion and are moving toward shrinking cities. Most of these cities are now facing social problems such as an aging population and a high prevalence of chronic diseases. Therefore, the “therapeutic” role and impact of everyday landscapes in these cities need to be examined in the context of urban development processes through appropriate assessment methods. Therefore, this study applies the ANP-mV model to examine the therapeutic nature of everyday urban landscapes in different development periods, with the aim of enhancing the health and well-being of people with chronic diseases. Firstly, this study uses the city of Jinzhou in Northeast China as an example to develop a framework for assessing the therapeutic nature of everyday urban landscapes based on the health care needs of people with chronic diseases; secondly, it examines the therapeutic nature of the former Jinzhou Suburban Riverfront Forest Park as it has developed and evolved over the past 16 years; finally, it explores place-making and regeneration strategies for therapeutic landscapes from the perspectives of dynamic impact and sustainable development to enhance chronic illness patients’ well-being. At the theoretical level, this study contributes by providing a methodology and research ideas for examining the “therapeutic” nature of everyday urban landscapes and proposing further development plans for renewal, constructing a framework for assessing therapeutic landscapes, and elucidating the relationship between networks of influence and the relative importance of various assessment dimensions/elements. At the practical application level, the contribution of this study is to provide local policymakers with a key decision basis for the future development planning of the East Lake Forest Park. The aim is to explore landscape creation and regeneration strategies for the East Lake Forest Park in the context of Jinzhou's progressive move toward a shrinking city, in order to sustain the well-being of the chronically ill.
1. Introduction
Previous research has repeatedly documented the restorative effects of place on health and well-being [1, 2] and has developed a number of framework concepts such as the biophilia hypothesis, the Attention Restoration Theory, and the concept of healing landscapes [3]. Under the concept of therapeutic landscapes, scholars have examined many types of landscapes associated with healing or rehabilitation, including natural landscapes such as villages, mountains, and lakes that have a reputation for healing [4, 5]. There are also everyday landscapes, such as places and residential areas where medical services are provided, and libraries [6, 7]. Then, there are urban landscapes, such as urban public green spaces and streets, and social networks [8, 9]. In humanist and cultural ecology theories, the formation of therapeutic landscapes is dynamic and the landscape can be seen as an evolving process where “therapeutic” is examined in the context of changing environmental, social, and economic conditions [10]. Yan and He [8] argue that it is important to explore the evolution of therapeutic landscapes, i.e., how therapeutic landscapes change over time.
Realistic experience shows that the development of local productivity, changes in social structure, and the introduction of macrogovernance policies can have a vital impact on the evolution of the urban landscape. When the landscape style changes, it will inevitably lead to discussions about endowing the landscape with healing properties or maintaining the healing properties of the place. Examples include exploring and understanding the creation of restorative and therapeutic spatial places for refugees or dislocated farmers in urban distribution and resettlement planning [9, 11, 12], exploring longevity villages as tourist destinations as the health tourism industry grows [8], and exploring design strategies for healing and therapeutic gardens in senior communities or medical buildings as we move toward a healthy aging society [13]. It is worth noting that as urban economies develop, populations grow, and the quality of life improves, cities at all levels in many regions experience varying degrees of expansion, and the landscape of former suburban areas will evolve significantly under the influence of multiple factors. For local urban dwellers, villages, green spaces, forests, and parks in the suburbs are often seen as therapeutic and healing landscapes that combine physical and nonphysical levels [14, 15].
Due to the economic downturn of cities, industrial transformation, and an aging population, the rate of urban expansion into suburban areas has generally slowed down in recent years, and more emphasis has been placed on the planning concept of “transformation” rather than “new construction/rebuilding,” with more emphasis on the inner development of cities, microrenewal, and adaptive improvement of urban space. Even in China, where the built-up area has grown exponentially over the past 30 years, spatial expansion is no longer the dominant form of urban development, and many cities are facing a shift from “incremental planning” to “stock planning” [16]. In China, in particular, a large number of small and medium-sized cities are now moving toward shrinking cities after urban expansion, with serious urban population loss and an increasing trend toward aging [17].
Concerned with the development of these cities, scholars and practitioners have proposed a range of urban regeneration and development strategies that can be summarized in three main development planning directions: regrowth, urban islands, and dedensification and greening [18]. Regardless of the development strategy, what needs to be acknowledged is the irreversibility of urban shrinkage, and that urban growth and decline, like life cycles, are seen as natural processes of urban change, requiring planning managers to shift a commonly accepted perception [19]. Scholars have suggested that local policymakers should examine whether sprawling urban landscapes meet the real needs of the current population and improve urban green space networks to increase the livability and attractiveness of cities, thereby mitigating population loss and enhancing economic vitality [20–22].
In contrast to China's Tier 1-2 cities, there is a large demand for healthcare in small and medium-sized cities that have undergone a brief and rapid urban expansion and are now gradually shrinking. Perhaps due to its unique natural environment and dietary habits, Northeast China has long been a region with a high prevalence of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and gout [23, 24]. In many cities in Northeast China, there is widespread and strong awareness of the need for chronic disease patients to go outdoors for physical, mental, and spiritual healing [25]. Through ongoing observations and interviews over many years, this study considers that people with chronic illnesses in the region value rely more on outdoor blue, green, and white spaces for healing and therapy in appropriate seasonal and climatic conditions. In the cities of Jinzhou in Liaoning Province and Jiamusi in Heilongjiang Province, for example, outside of the extreme weather days in the northeast, large numbers of people regularly enter urban squares, parks, and waterfront streets where people can gather and relax on an almost daily basis to enjoy the healing and therapeutic effects of the landscape through a variety of health behaviors and activities. Therefore, as cities shift from sprawl to contraction and respond to the current needs of the population to continue to enhance the health and well-being of people with chronic diseases, the former suburban landscape needs to be reexamined not only for its therapeutic qualities but also for new place-making strategies in urban regeneration. However, much of the previous research has focused on examining the positive effects of landscape environments on patients [26, 27] and explaining the formation and evolution of therapeutic landscapes. Few scholars have integrated urban development and planning concepts in a public health context, examining the therapeutic nature of an evolving landscape and exploring how to shape therapeutic landscapes for sustainable well-being in urban regeneration.
In summary, this study uses the city of Jinzhou in Liaoning Province, China, as a case study. The city has experienced a brief and rapid urban expansion and is now shifting to a shrinking city with significant population loss and an aging trend. The city has a high prevalence of chronic diseases in the northeast and is generally representative of healthcare resources and the development of the built-up areas. The purpose of this study is to develop a framework for assessing the therapeutic nature of everyday urban landscapes based on the health care needs of people with chronic diseases, examine the therapeutic nature of the former Jinzhou Suburban Riverfront Forest Park as it has developed and evolved over the past 16 years, and explore strategies for place-making and regeneration of therapeutic landscapes for the well-being of people with chronic diseases from a dynamic impact and continuous development perspective. The design of this study is shown in Figure 1. Firstly, this study uses a literature review to initially extract the elements of therapeutic assessment for everyday urban landscapes and then, through focus group interviews, constructs a framework for assessing the therapeutic landscape of the East Lake Forest Park in Linghe District, Jinzhou City, based on the health care needs of people with chronic illnesses. Secondly, a network analysis method (ANP) was applied to assign weights to the assessment elements based on expert opinion, and a modified VIKOR technique was applied to examine the therapeutic landscape of Jinzhou City's Donghu Forest Park for people with chronic diseases over the past 16 years, in conjunction with interviews and questionnaires administered by the public. Finally, based on the results of the assessment and analysis, strategies for the creation and renewal of the therapeutic landscape of the East Lake Forest Park are explored in the context of Jinzhou's progressive move toward a shrinking city, in order to sustain the well-being of people with chronic diseases.
... Deciphering the specific content that may provide optimal therapeutic benefit is an area of active research. Most experimental studies have focused on visual imagery (Hägerhäll et al., 2018;Kahn, 2018;Ulrich, 1984;Ulrich, Lunden, & Eltinge, 1993;Velarde, Fry, & Tveit, 2007). ...
... Decision-makers have begun to understand the importance of solid waste management aspect of environmental management (Norton, Faber, and Rapport 1992;Roome 1992;Marshall and Brown 2003;Monte et al. 2009) to highlight the weak state of municipal waste services provision. Ethiopia's urban environments are characterized by unplanned and unmanaged industrialization and urbanization, a very high population, and unplanned settlement, crowded market centres, and poor infrastructure (Pacione 2003;Velarde, Fry, and Tveit 2007;Mulugeta 2012). Even, the capital of the country, Addis Ababa, is characterized by spontaneous and random land use development with poor quality services and facilities, poor quality standard of road network systems, inefficient traffic management, decaying condition of the existing housing situation, unbalanced and un-coordinated investment in different parts, inefficient utilization of potential sites and resources, inefficient administration and usage of land, etc. (Terefe 2010). ...
Lack of integration between urban environmental planning and solid waste management is a challenge for cities in developing countries. The aim of the research was to analyze the nexus between local communities’ perceptions of urban environmental planning and solid waste management practices in Debre Markos Town, Northwest Ethiopia. The study applied a binary logistic regression approach to identify the factors that influence local communities’ perceptions about urban environmental planning and solid waste management practices. Results show that education level, family size, income and availability of safe disposal sites are statistically significant (either at P < 0.01 or P < 0.05) predictors of local communities’ perceptions. The challenges and prospects of urban environmental management were varied and rated from least to very big by respondents. Lack of commitment is reported at 41% as a very big challenge and at 43% as a big challenge of urban environmental management. The paper concludes by proposing proper implementation of the integration of solid waste management and urban environmental planning for sustainable urban development.
... Scientific studies conducted on this subject prove the accuracy of this new application. It is argued that such studies, which increase the importance of visual access to nature to improve the physical and psychological health of individuals, also increase the demand for UGS's (Velarde et al., 2007;Slater et al., 2020). The fact that people living in Istanbul, which is a city where forests and UGS's are rapidly disappearing due to distorted urbanization (Ş ahin, 2014;Cengiz et al., 2019;Dogru et al., 2020), better understood the value of UGS's with limited numbers and space after pandemic restrictions indicated this. ...
With the advent of effects of the Covid-19 pandemic spreading far and wide throughout many countries in the world, both similar and differing measures are being taken in an effort to manage and curtail them. In addition to weekend lockdowns and closures of café’s and public meeting places throughout Turkey in the early stages of the pandemic, public coasts and urban green spaces (UGS’s) were also closed in order to maintain social distancing. The aim of the current study is to reveal the opinions of UGS users regarding the measures taken in general against the pandemic, and the measure of closing the coasts and UGS’s for use. For this purpose, the distribution of a questionnaire to 239 UGS users was coordinated. The results indicate that people do not support both pandemic measures in general, and the measure of closing the coasts and UGS’s for use. According to the findings based on the opinions of the survey participants, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused more psychological problems than physical problems. UGS’s are very important in aiding the elimination of some of the negative effects the pandemic has helped create, as well as the effects of the measures taken in general against it. Covid-19 restrictions have given rise to the need to redesign UGS’s, and the lessons learned from the pandemic and usage habits must be taken into account in new designs.
... Forest recreation areas also have recreational value [8][9][10]. The recreational benefits offered by the forest and green space in forest recreation areas can improve both physical and mental health [11][12][13][14]. Although forest parks can provide many services, they are threatened by urbanization and increases in population density [15]. ...
This study aimed to construct an effective model to estimate the recreation value and total annual recreation benefits of the Alishan National Forest Recreation Area (ANFR) through the travel cost method. Negative binomial regression was also employed to estimate the demand function. This study sorted participants based on gender, age, level of education, personal monthly income, occupation, and place of residence to examine their differences in perceived recreation value and recreation demand. The survey responses revealed that most tourists were mainly middle aged, and took family vacations. The findings indicate that the recreation benefits of traveling to Alishan per person each year equaled NTD 1703. Furthermore, the annual recreation benefits of Alishan were approximately between NTD 2,157,121,944 and NTD 2,452,136,112 based on a total of 1,353,276 visits traveling to Alishan in 2019. Recommendations and suggestions are drawn for ANFR based the results.
... The findings agree with the notion that both the biophilic qualities of the buildings and the leisure and culture possibilities offered by the spaces contribute to the restorative value of a place (Herzog and Shier, 2000;Herzog et al., 2010;Weber and Trojan, 2018;Coburn et al., 2019). The typical dichotomy between the commonly low restorative built environments and the high restorative natural environments (Verlade et al., 2007) needs a further re-examination when considering the biophilic, cultural, and social aspects of places that also promote restorative outcomes. It is remarkable that historic interiors and courtyards with biophilic architecture are the second category of settings with the highest restorative potential. ...
The interactive role of the ecological, architectural, biophilic, and sensory qualities of outdoor and indoor spaces in the restorative experiences of urban inhabitants is little known. We analyzed the restorative influence on mood states and situational stress related to exposure to vegetation proportion, spatial extension, landmark salience, biophilic architecture, people density, street visual access, olfactory pleasantness, and noise of 65 public spaces in a Mexican city. The environmental qualities of these places were analyzed with multidimensional scaling (MDS), leading to eight space categories (e.g., historic squares with biophilic architecture, large parks, street scenes, and interiors with non-biophilic architecture). Ratings of the restorative potential, mood states, situational stress, olfactory pleasantness, and noise annoyance were evaluated on such places and modeled through a structural equation modeling (SEM). The model shows that the restorative influence of the environmental qualities on moods and stress was related to a decrease in experiences of negative moods and perceived stress, and an increase of positive mood states. Based on our findings, we discuss design guidelines, emphasizing the relevance of including vegetation and built elements with biophilic qualities to create restorative environments.
... Urban green space plays an increasingly important role in promoting human wellbeing [1][2][3][4][5][6] and relieving stress and mental fatigue [7,8]. Well-designed urban greening environment not only improves urban aesthetic quality [9] but also promotes the physical and mental health of urban residents [10]. ...
The vegetation landscape in urban green space has been shown to provide great psychological benefits to people. Flower border is a well-designed small-scale vegetation landscape with the advantages of color and vegetation richness. This study focused on the effects of the visual attributes of flower borders on the aesthetic preference and emotional perception. The face recognition measurement method was used to obtain the emotional perception and the questionnaire survey method was used to measure the aesthetic preference. The results indicated the following: (1) regarding the ‘color features’ factor, high proportions of cool color and green vegetation significantly increased aesthetic preference and emotional valence, while the proportion of warm color had a negative effect on valence; (2) the ‘visual attractiveness’ (color brightness, and visual richness) and ‘color configuration’ (number of plant patches and number of color hues) factor was positively associated with aesthetic preference and emotional valence; (3) aesthetic preference was significantly related to emotional valence; (4) males expressed higher aesthetic preference and valence for flower border images than females. The results are expected to improve the aesthetic quality of flower borders and to promote public emotional health through the effective design of urban vegetation landscapes.
The ancient theatre of Dionysos in Athens is discussed here in regard to a) its placement beside the City Asklepieion and b) its function within the framework of the cult of Asklepios. Archaeological and epigraphic data suggest that musical and drama contests, philosophical poetry competitions, paeans, “mystic dramas” and performative rituals were held in the theatre in honor of Asklepios. This paper intends to show that the Athenians were the first to realize that music and drama played an important role in the process of healing. Therefore, the healing sanctuary of Asklepios was founded near the theatre of Dionysos on the south slope of the Acropolis at Athens. From then on, many cities followed the example of Athens and included a theatre in or next to an Asklepieion.
The Biophilia Hypothesis proposes that people have the instinct to be with nature and living bodies. Using the biophilic design can integrate nature into the built environment, thereby promoting health benefits such as physical and psychological health benefits, which is in line with related environmental psychology theories and Traditional Environmental Qi. However, there have not yet been developed evaluation items that can measure perceived biophilic design. The research builds on biophilic design theory to accurately understanding the concept and meanings and cooperates with expert group discussions, landscape professionals, and non-professionals to adjust semantics and the use of words in questionnaires. The research extracts 57 environmental features and elements from 72 items, which produced by Kellert, Heerwagen, & Mador (2008) and develops 59 questions to evaluate the items of perceived biophilic design in the built environment. This research contributes to providing a Perceived Biophilic Design Items to measure a sense of experience in nature. Through the overall perception evaluation method, it can be applied to the planning and design in the landscape.
This study examines the relationship between educational awareness and natural disasters through the lens of flood mitigation and also attempts to understand the perceptional and socio-demographical impacts in flood-prone areas. Recorded as one of the most catastrophic storms in the U.S., Hurricane Harvey caused massive damages to the environment and negatively affected public health and well-being. Having sustained three flood events since opening, including Hurricane Harvey, Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, Texas, became the case study for this research as its role relative to educational awareness and natural disasters became the focus. The study performed a questionnaire-based survey with park users. Findings showed that concerns existed with respect to park use, socio-demographics, and accessibility. The findings also showed, however, that the park design contributed to flood mitigation strategies through establishment of educational awareness of natural disasters. This awareness was confirmed by park users being knowledgeable of some flood protection strategies, including planting native and local plants and curving the bayous naturally. Also, park users noted their preference for receiving disaster-related educational news via social media and partnerships/non-profit organizations. Finally, none of the socio-demographic features showed a difference for the logistic regression model as a significant predictor while attending educational events and residing within twenty minutes of the park significantly increased flood-mitigation awareness. This study highlights several efficient strategies that can complement the role of urban parks relative to how people experience and perceive educational activities concerning natural disasters.
Underground coal mining causes subsidence. How to use this subsidence is a big challenge for planners and policy makers. The subsidence in urban area is typically used as green space in China. However, is the green space transformed from subsidence preferred by the general public? Also, is there another better way to use subsidence? To answer these questions a subsidence in Xuzhou, eastern China was selected to explore participants’ esthetic perception for three reclamation modes: urban park (called designed landscape), natural succession of ecosystem (called natural landscape) and the scenario formed by adding a path to natural landscape using photomontage simulation (called combination of design and nature) across four seasons. Statistical analysis showed that designed landscape was preferred over natural landscape. Although there were no significant differences in preference between four seasons for both natural and designed landscape, designed landscape had a smaller preference fluctuation across four seasons than natural landscape. And the combination of design and nature gained higher preference score than both designed landscape and natural landscape. The findings in this study provide reliable evidence to guide the reclamation of coal mining subsidence.
The urban green spaces are immensely significant to ensure quality of life in a city. However, their spatial distribution is found to be inequitable. The study investigates spatial distribution of green space through remote sensing data at different times in four Indian cities. It further examines the distribution of urban parks with respect to the location of slums. The results demonstrate that green spaces in the study areas changed considerably in the last two decades. The public urban parks are far from slum areas, and their spatial distribution is inequitable. Urban green spaces should be considered a matter of environment justice.
There is growing evidence that people’s interactions with water are beneficial to their health. However, existing studies have focused primarily on natural bodies of water such as seas, rivers, and lakes. Artificial water features such as ponds and fountains have received relatively little attention. This literature review aims to examine existing evidence on the health-related benefits of artificial water features and identify knowledge gaps. Following the PRISMA extension for Scoping Review (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines, five databases (Web of Science, PsycINFO, CINAHL, MEDLINE, and Garden, Landscape & Horticulture Index) were searched for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English between 1980 and 2020.
Twenty-one articles were included in this review. The results showed that people could gain different levels of health-related benefits from artificial water features. Studies have supported significant psychological benefits (e.g., stress restoration) and behavioral benefits (e.g., physical activity and social interaction) of artificial water features, while direct physical and social health benefits have not been well documented. In terms of the types of interactions with water features, passive interactions (e.g., viewing and listening) were more popularly studied than active interactions.
Despite the multiple health benefits reported in these studies, the breadth and depth of existing studies on the health significance of artificial water features were limited. Future research is needed, covering a broader range of settings, users, interaction types, and health-related outcomes and addressing the complex pathways between artificial water features and human health outcomes.
Developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the intent of the Human Development Index (HDI) was to assess country development through the lens of human capability development and potential, as an alternative to the reliance on economic growth. The HDI has served as a proxy for the determination of quality of life, which is measured in terms of life expectancy at birth, educational attainment in terms of number of years of school, and the gross national income (GNI) per capita as a reflection of the standard of living. While the HDI has been an effective measure that has guided country development and enabled human progress, existential research and Human Development Reports of the UNDP have acknowledged deficiencies in the existing HDI algorithm, highlighting a gap between HDI scores and quality of life. Through a narrative review and synthesis of literature published between 1978 and 2020, the aim of this research is to address the appropriateness of the HDI as a measure of quality of life. Three propositions along with an outcome-based process approach to quality of life are proposed to shape future research and development of the HDI.
Asclepius was one of the most popular healing deities in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Patients suffering from various diseases resorted to his sanctuaries, the so-called asclepieia, looking for cure. Many inscriptions preserve stories of supplicants who slept in the abaton of the temples and claimed that they had been healed or received remedies from the god. The historical study may take into consideration modern (neuro)cognitive research on the placebo effects in order to examine the possibilities of actual healing experiences at the asclepeiea. In this paper, I take into account the theoretical premises of the placebo drama theory suggested by Ted Kaptchuk in order to explore the specific factors, including the personality of Asclepius, his patients’ mindsets, the relationship between them, the nature of the supplicants’ impairments, the employed or prescribed treatments and the ritual settings of the cult, which could have mediated health recovery, and contributed to the phenomenal success of the Asclepian therapies via the activation of patients’ placebo responses.
The views that windows provide from inside a building affect human health and well-being. Although window view is an important element of architecture, there is no established framework to guide its design. The literature is widely dispersed across different disciplinary fields, and there is a need to coalesce this information into a framework that can be applied into the building design. Based on the literature, we present a framework for what constitutes “view quality.” At the basis of our framework, we propose three primary variables: View Content (the assessment of visual features seen in the window view); View Access (the measure of how much of the view can be seen through the window from the occupant’s position); and View Clarity (the assessment of how clear the view content appears in the window view when seen by an occupant). Each variable was thematically derived from different sources including daylighting standards, green certification systems, and scientific research studies. We describe the most important characteristics of each variable, and from our review of the literature, we propose a conceptual index that can evaluate the quality of a window view. While discussing the index, we summarize design recommendations for integrating these three variables into the building process and identify knowledge gaps for future research.
Research suggests that the formation of neighborhood social ties (NSTs) may substantially depend on the informal social contact which occurs in neighborhood common spaces, and that in inner‐city neighborhoods where common spaces are often barren no‐man's lands, the presence of trees and grass supports common space use and informal social contact among neighbors. We found that for 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to 18 architecturally identical buildings, levels of vegetation in common spaces predict both use of common spaces and NSTs; further, use of common spaces mediated the relationship between vegetation and NSTS. In addition, vegetation and NSTs were significantly related to residents' senses of safety and adjustment. These findings suggest that the use and characteristics of common spaces may play a vital role in the natural growth of community, and that improving common spaces may be an especially productive focus for community organizing efforts in inner‐city neighborhoods.
緑地の視覚心理的効果を明らかにするために, 本実験では生垣, ブロック塀, さらに緑量的にそれらの中間的な段階の視覚対象として樹木とブロックの比が2:5, 4:3, 5:2となる場合の5つの対象物をみたときの脳波, 特にα波β波について分析を行った。 その結果, α波とβ波の合計値に占めるα波の割合が, ブロックに対する樹木の割合が半分以上になると高くなる傾向を示した。 一般に, 安静時にはα波が増え, 緊張時にはβ波が増えると言われていることから, この傾向はブロックが緊張感をもたらし, 樹木はそれを和らげる効果があることを示唆するものであることが明らかになった。
The findings suggest that stressed individuals feel significantly better after exposure to nature scenes rather than to American urban scenes lacking nature elements. Compared to the influences of the urban scenes, the salient effect of the nature exposures was to increase Positive Affect — including feelings of affection friendliness, playfulness, and elation. The increase in positive affect produced by the nature scenes is consistent with the finding that the nature exposures also significantly reduced Fear Arousal. According to psychological theories, a reduction in arousal or activation produces pleasurable feelings if an individual is experiencing stress or excessive arousal (Berlyne, 1971, pp. 81–82). In contrast to the nature scenes, the urban views tended to work against emotional well‐being. The major effect of the urban scenes was to significantly increase Sadness. There was also a consistent but non‐significant tendency for the urban scenes to‐aggravate feelings of Anger/Aggression, and for the nature scenes to reduce such feelings. The urban exposures also held the attention of subjects somewhat less effectively than the nature exposures. These findings were stable across sexes, and applied to subjects who had grown up in either rural or urban environments.
Research has shown that people typically give high aesthetic preference ratings to trees with spreading canopies, similar to those found on the African savanna. If the savanna hypothesis is correct, people likely will have strong emotional responses to such trees as well. In this study, preferences and emotional responses of 206 participants to viewing scenes with different tree forms and urban elements were examined. Slide images of spreading, rounded, or columnar trees, or inanimate objects in two urban scenes were created. As expected, participants found scenes with trees more attractive than scenes with inanimate objects, and they rated spreading trees more attractive than rounded or columnar trees. Participants reported more positive emotions when viewing trees compared to inanimate objects, and they were happier when viewing spreading trees compared with other tree forms. These results are consistent with the savanna hypothesis, with emotional responses relating to preferences for trees with spreading forms.
Although vegetation has been positively linked to fear of crime and crime in a number of settings, recent findings in urban residential areas have hinted at a possible negative relationship: Residents living in "greener" surroundings report lower levels of fear, fewer incivilities, and less aggressive and violent behavior. This study used police crime reports to examine the relationship between vegetation and crime in an inner-city neighborhood. Crime rates for 98 apartment buildings with varying levels of nearby vegetation were compared. Results indicate that although residents were randomly assigned to different levels of nearby vegetation, the greener a building's surroundings were, the fewer crimes reported. Furthermore, this pattern held for both property crimes and violent crimes. The relationship of vegetation to crime held after the number of apartments per building, building height, vacancy rate, and number of occupied units per building were accounted for.
Subjects viewed sixty color slides of either (1) nature with water, (2) nature dominated by vegetation, or (3) urban environments without water or vegetation. The information rates of the three slide samples were equivalent. Measurements were taken of the effects of the slide presentations on alpha amplitude, heart rate, and emotional states. Results revealed several significant differences as a function of environment, which together indicate that the two categories of nature views had more positive influences on psychophysiological states than the urban scenes. Alpha was significantly higher during the vegetation as opposed to urban slides; similarly, alpha was higher on the average when subjects viewed water rather than urban content. There was also a consistent pattern for nature, especially water, to have more positive influences on emotional states. A salient finding was that water, and to a lesser extent vegetation views, held attention and interest more effectively than the urban scenes. Implications of the findings for theory development in environmental aesthetics are discussed.
S. Kaplan suggested that one outcome of mental fatigue may be an increased propensity for outbursts of anger and even violence. If so, contact with nature, which appears to mitigate mental fatigue, may reduce aggression and violence. This study investigated that possibility in a setting and population with relatively high rates of aggression: inner-city urban public housing residents. Levels of aggression were compared for 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to buildings with varying levels of nearby nature (trees and grass). Attentional functioning was assessed as an index of mental fatigue. Residents living in relatively barren buildings reported more aggression and violence than did their counterparts in greener buildings. Moreover, levels of mental fatigue were higher in barren buildings, and aggression accompanied mental fatigue. Tests for the proposed mechanism and for alternative mechanisms indicated that the relationship between nearby nature and aggression was fully mediated through attentional functioning.
All over the world there is an increasing interest in research results showing the impact of the physical environment on people's health and well-being. The realization that good design, both indoors and outdoors, not only generates functional efficiency but also strengthens and improves health processes has given rise to a new branch of architecture, called Design and Health (Dilani, 2001). Knowledge and awareness of how good design as well as bad design may influence people's well-being is increasing among architects as well as among interior decorators and landscape architects. An expression of design and health in landscape architecture is to be found in the movement around healing gardens, i.e. gardens that in different ways may influence the visitor in a positive way (Cooper Marcus & Barnes, 1999). In Sweden today, the concept of healing has several connotations, some quite concrete, others more spiritual and mental. Generally speaking, however, healing may be said to be a process that promotes overall well-being (Cooper Marcus & Barnes, 1999). In medical anthropology the individual's personal, subjective experience of recovery is also emphasized (Janzen, 2002). It is in other words equally important that the illness is cured in a purely medical respect and that the individual experiences a personal feeling of recovery. Is it, then, possible for a garden to be anything else than healing? Is not the aspect of healing woven into the very concept of garden? Myths all over the world depict the garden as an enclosed and safe place where one takes refuge to find shelter, comfort, and relief from sorrow and pain (Prest, 1988;
During the past 20 years, findings have indicated that nature plays an active role in helping people recover from stress and fatigue. Two of the most cited theories in this field are Rachel and Stephen Kaplan's theory of recovery from Directed Attention Fatigue in nature and Roger Ulrich's theory of aesthetic and affective responses to natural environments and stress recovery. One aim of the present study is to test whether being outdoors in a green recreational environment causes people to be more focused, compared to being in a room indoors (in line with hypotheses suggested by the Kaplans). Another aim is to test whether people experience stress reduction, i.e. as evidenced by changes in blood pressure and heart rate, if they are placed in an environment with many green elements (in line with hypotheses suggested by Ulrich). The overall study design is that of an intervention study. Fifteen elderly persons living at a home for very elderly people participated. Their powers of concentration, blood pressure and heart rate were measured before and after an hour of rest in a garden or in an indoor setting. Seven elderly people were randomly chosen to have their first series of tests in a garden, while eight elderly people had their first series of tests indoors. The results indicate that powers of concentration increase for very elderly people after a visit to a garden outside the geriatric home in which they live, compared to that after resting indoors in their favourite room. The results did not show any effects on blood pressure or heart rate. It is suggested that having a one-hour rest outdoors in a garden setting plays a role in elderly people's powers of concentration, and could thereby affect their performance of activities of daily living. One important factor in this study was that both the outdoor environment and the indoor environment at the home were highly valued by participants.
Examined whether the presence of nearby nature might lend urban public housing residents the psychological resources to grapple with the challenges facing them. More specifically, it examines whether natural elements in the public housing outdoor environment—trees and grass—can assist in restoring the very psychological resources likely to be depleted in the struggle against poverty. In 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to buildings with and without nearby nature, attentional functioning and effectiveness in managing major life issues were compared. Residents living in buildings without nearby trees and grass reported more procrastination in facing their major issues and assessed their issues as more severe, less soluble, and more longstanding than did their counterparts living in greener surroundings. Mediation tests and extensive tests for possible confounds supported the attention restoration hypothesis—that green space enhances residents' effectiveness by reducing mental fatigue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Environmental preferences vary with the environments evaluated and the people who evaluated them. When research has considered the explanatory power of person variables, it has focused on traits or demographic characteristics. Little research has considered how environmental preferences vary with regularly occurring psychological states, such as attentional fatigue. In this experiment, we investigated the need for psychological restoration as a within-individual determinant of the common preference differential between natural and urban environments. We treated preference as an attitude, constituted of beliefs about the likelihood of restoration during a walk in a given environment and the evaluation of restoration given different restoration needs. College students (N=103) completed the procedure just before a morning lecture (less fatigue condition) or immediately after an afternoon lecture, which itself followed the passage of time and other activities over the day (more fatigue condition). In both fatigue conditions, participants reported more favorable attitudes toward a walk in a forest than a walk in a city center, but this difference was larger with the more fatigued. This result apparently owes to the more fatigued participants’ more positive evaluation of attentional recovery, and a greater judged likelihood of restoration when walking in the forest.
We used a direct rating approach based on definitions of each construct to measure the four components of a restorative environment proposed by attention restoration theory (ART): being away, extent, fascination, and compatibility. We used the same approach to measure two criterion variables, perceived restorative potential (PRP) of a setting and preference for the setting, as well as four additional predictor variables (openness, visual access, movement ease, and setting care). Each participant rated 70 settings, 35 each from urban and natural environments, for only one of the variables. Mean ratings were higher for the natural than the urban settings for both criterion variables and all four restorative components, with differences significant in all cases except for fascination. Correlations across settings generally followed the predictions of ART, but collinearity appeared among several sets of variables, most notably being away and setting category, PRP and preference, and extent and fascination. Despite these problems, regression analysis showed that being away and compatibility predicted PRP and that the pattern of prediction for PRP and preference was somewhat different. r 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
Research suggests that the formation of neighborhood social ties (NSTs) may substantially depend on the informal social contact which occurs in neighborhood common spaces, and that in inner-city neighborhoods where common spaces are often barren no-man's lands, the presence of trees and grass supports common space use and informal social contact among neighbors. We found that for 145 urban public housing residents randomly assigned to 18 architecturally identical buildings, levels of vegetation in common spaces predict both use of common spaces and NSTs; further, use of common spaces mediated the relationship between vegetation and NSTS. In addition, vegetation and NSTs were significantly related to residents' senses of safety and adjustment. These findings suggest that the use and characteristics of common spaces may play a vital role in the natural growth of community, and that improving common spaces may be an especially productive focus for community organizing efforts in inner-city neighborhoods.
Attention Restoration Theory (ART) proposes that effortful directed attention can become fatigued in modern urban environments. Restoration can occur in a setting that evokes fascination (effortless attention). Ordinary natural settings evoke soft fascination, that is, moderate fascination accompanied by esthetic pleasure. Such settings enable a fully restorative experience, including the recovery of directed attention and the opportunity for serious reflection. Settings broadly classified as sports/entertainment are more likely to evoke hard fascination, that is, very high levels of fascination that fill the mind. Such settings permit directed attention recovery but afford little opportunity for reflection. We tested these ideas by having participants rate the perceived restorative effectiveness of three kinds of settings (ordinary natural, sports/entertainment, and everyday urban) under two goal-set conditions (as places for attentional recovery or for reflection). Ordinary natural settings were seen as having the highest overall restorative effectiveness, everyday urban settings as having the lowest, and sports/entertainment settings as in between. Moreover, sports/entertainment settings were seen as higher in restorative effectiveness for the attentional-recovery goal set than for the reflection goal set. No such goal-set difference occurred for the other two setting categories combined. These results are in agreement with the predictions of ART.
Our purpose was to investigate perceived tranquility (theoretically a combination of moderate fascination and aesthetic pleasure) and perceived danger in urban and natural settings. We explored the relationship of these two target variables to each other and to a set of three predictor variables: openness, setting care, and nature (amount of foliage and vegetation). Participants rated each of 48 color slides, evenly divided between urban and field/forest natural settings, for only one of the five variables. Several predictions derived from Attention Restoration Theory for tranquility and from a review of the environmental criminology literature for danger were supported: (1) tranquility was rated higher in natural than in urban settings, and the reverse was true for danger; (2) tranquility and danger were negatively correlated across all settings; (3) the three predictor variables were generally positively related to tranquility and negatively related to danger. Two variations from the general pattern of results emerged in model-testing analyses that controlled for setting category and the presence of other predictors. First, the negative relationship between setting care and perceived danger was stronger for urban than for natural settings, indicating that setting care is more salient for judgments of danger in urban settings. Second, openness was a significant predictor of danger (a negative relationship) but not of tranquility. These variations suggest that tranquility and danger probably should be viewed not as polar opposites but as distinct constructs.
This study evaluates three healing gardens surrounding a pediatric cancer center. All gardens contained seating, flowers and plants, but varied in size, features, and in user groups’ access to them. A post-occupancy evaluation (POE) yielded a dataset of 1400 garden-users for whom demographic information, activities, and length-of-stay were recorded. Results indicate differential usage patterns across gardens, user category (patient, visitor, or staff), and age (adults and children). The largest garden with most direct patient access was the most used. Staff mostly used the gardens to walk-through or to sit and eat, rarely interacting with features intended for active engagement. Despite patient and child-friendly designs, the overwhelming majority of visitors were adults who mostly engaged in sedentary activities. Children who did use the gardens interacted with garden features significantly more than adults. Although patient rooms are situated at ground-level around the gardens to promote window views of the gardens, the findings suggest an inverse relationship between patient window use and the number of people in the gardens. Finally, preliminary data suggest that emotional distress and pain are lower for all groups when in the gardens than when inside the hospital. Provisional design implications of these findings are discussed.
Children growing up in the inner city are at risk of academic underachievement, juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and other important negative outcomes. Avoiding these outcomes requires self-discipline. Self-discipline, in turn, may draw on directed attention, a limited resource that can be renewed through contact with nature. This study examined the relationship between near-home nature and three forms of self-discipline in 169 inner city girls and boys randomly assigned to 12 architecturally identical high-rise buildings with varying levels of nearby nature. Parent ratings of the naturalness of the view from home were used to predict children's performance on tests of concentration, impulse inhibition, and delay of gratification. Regressions indicated that, on average, the more natural a girl's view from home, the better her performance at each of these forms of self-discipline. For girls, view accounted for 20% of the variance in scores on the combined self-discipline index. For boys, who typically spend less time playing in and around their homes, view from home showed no relationship to performance on any measure. These findings suggest that, for girls, green space immediately outside the home can help them lead more effective, self-disciplined lives. For boys, perhaps more distant green spaces are equally important.
Different conceptual perspectives converge to predict that if individuals are stressed, an encounter with most unthreatening natural environments will have a stress reducing or restorative influence, whereas many urban environments will hamper recuperation. Hypotheses regarding emotional, attentional and physiological aspects of stress reducing influences of nature are derived from a psycho-evolutionary theory. To investigate these hypotheses, 120 subjects first viewed a stressful movie, and then were exposed to color/sound videotapes of one of six different natural and urban settings. Data concerning stress recovery during the environmental presentations were obtained from self-ratings of affective states and a battery of physiological measures: heart period, muscle tension, skin conductance and pulse transit time, a non-invasive measure that correlates with systolic blood pressure. Findings from the physiological and verbal measures converged to indicate that recovery was faster and more complete when subjects were exposed to natural rather than urban environments. The pattern of physiological findings raised the possibility that responses to nature had a salient parasympathetic nervous system component; however, there was no evidence of pronounced parasympathetic involvement in responses to the urban settings. There were directional differences in cardiac responses to the natural vs urban settings, suggesting that attention/intake was higher during the natural exposures. However, both the stressor film and the nature settings elicited high levels of involuntary or automatic attention, which contradicts the notion that restorative influences of nature stem from involuntary attention or fascination. Findings were consistent with the predictions of the psycho-evolutionary theory that restorative influences of nature involve a shift towards a more positively-toned emotional state, positive changes in physiological activity levels, and that these changes are accompanied by sustained attention/intake. Content differences in terms of natural vs human-made properties appeared decisive in accounting for the differences in recuperation and perceptual intake.
The population of the United States of America is currently experiencing increased illness from dispersed and synergistic causes. Many of the acute insults of the past have receded due to centralized health care and regulatory action. However, chronic ailments including asthma and allergies, animal-transmitted diseases, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and depression are on the rise. These diverse illnesses join with forest fragmentation, stream degradation, wetlands destruction, and the concomitant loss of native species to suggest detrimental contributions from the built environment.
Most work on healing places has involved sites associated with the Western cultural tradition and expressed in focused locations. This paper examines a non-Western culture and a diffuse landscape of healing. Everything in Navajo culture could be called 'religious,' in that religious feeling cannot be separated from any aspect of a traditional Navajo life. Much of this religious feeling is embodied in the landscape itself. This article explores the ways in which the physical landscape, the spiritual landscape, the symbolic landscape, and the built environment-intertwine and interact to produce a sacred geography which functions as a healing landscape.
This study reports on the development and psychometric validation of a perceived restorative components scale for children (PRCS-C). Children (n=112 boys, n=113 girls) aged 8 to 11 years completed an initial pool of 23 items addressing the components of a restorative environment to assess two familiar, everyday environments- their school playground and their school library. Factor analysis indicated a five-factor model (Being Away– Physical, Being Away- Psychological, Fascination, Compatibility and Extent) of 15 items best fit the data, consistent with prior adult restorativeness measure research and fitting within Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory. Satisfactory internal consistency was found for four of the five factors, with a two-item construct of Extent being lowest. School playgrounds had significantly higher restoration potential than school libraries, when compared with school classrooms, indicating divergent validity of the measure. Results were examined by sex and age and differences reported as a broad indicator of the measure’s ability to differentiate between groups of people’s reports of perceived restorativeness and possible developmental differences.
The increase in stress and stress-related ill- health is escalating dramatically in the Western World. An alarmingly growing part of the bud- get for medical services in Sweden is being used for people suffering from different stress-rela- ted ill-health. In this paper, we present some results from a study in which 656 randomly selected people in nine Swedish cities answered a questionnaire addressing their experiences of stress and their use of green outdoor environments at their workplaces. The results may be interpreted as showing that access to a garden at work may have a positive impact both on stress and on "trivsel", a Swedish word meaning comfort, pleasure and well-being. Apart from actually being in a garden, a view of a garden may also decrease employees' level of stress and affect trivsel in a positive way. According to our results, laying out more and easily accessible gardens adjacent to workplaces could create environments that are more resto- rative and freer from demands and stress.
Research and teaching in environmental health have centered on the hazardous effects of various environmental exposures, such as toxic chemicals, radiation, and biological and physical agents. However, some kinds of environmental exposures may have positive health effects. According to E.O. Wilson’s “biophilia” hypothesis, humans are innately attracted to other living organisms. Later authors have expanded this concept to suggest that humans have an innate bond with nature more generally. This implies that certain kinds of contact with the natural world may benefit health. Evidence supporting this hypothesis is presented from four aspects of the natural world: animals, plants, landscapes, and wilderness. Finally, the implications of this hypothesis for a broader agenda for environmental health, encompassing not only toxic outcomes but also salutary ones, are discussed. This agenda implies research on a range of potentially healthful environmental exposures, collaboration among professionals in a range of disciplines from public health to landscape architecture to city planning, and interventions based on research outcomes.
The paper reports on a study that looks at the impact of a corrections environment upon prisoners through a process of monitoring inmate attendance at sick call clinic. Contrasting cell block designs and characteristics are compared on the basis of significant differential demands for health care services emanating from specific areas. Known psychological and physiological responses to situations perceived to be threatening provide the theory that health behavior may be used as one indirect measure of environmentally induced stress. Findings suggest there are architectural design features of the prison environment that provide basis of perceived threats to inmate safety and survival. Loss of privacy on several dimensions appears to be a critical environmental characteristic.
This article investigates the direct and indirect effects of windows in the workplace onjob satisfaction, intention to quit, and general well-being. The impact of three specific influencing mechanisms are examined: general level of illumination, sunlight penetration, and view. The extent to which these environmental features might moderate the negative consequences of job stress is investigated. The sample consisted of 100 white-and blue-collar workers who were employed in a large wine-producing organization in the Mediterranean region of Southern Europe. The results showed a significant direct effect for sunlight penetration on job satisfaction, intention to quit, and general well-being. A view of natural elements (i.e., trees, vegetation, plants, and foliage) was found to buffer the negative impact of job stress on intention to quit and to have a similar, albeit marginal, effect on general well-being. No effects for general level of illumination were found.
A new direction for medical geographic study is suggested, the analysis of places which have attained an enduring reputation for achieving physical, mental, and spiritual healing. The reasons for the efficacy of these therapeutic landscapes can be examined by using themes derived from the traditional landscape ideas of cultural geography, humanistic geography, structuralist geography, and the principles of holistic health. These themes are categorized as inner/meaning (including the natural setting, the built environment, sense of place, symbolic landscapes, and everyday activities) and outer/societal context (including beliefs and philosophies, social relations and/or inequalities, and territoriality). By using a methodology termed an 'archaeology of discourse' in which written and oral documents are examined, the themes are used to investigate the healing reputation of the Asclepian sanctuary at Epidauros, Greece. Study findings have policy implications for health-care practice today.
Abstract The ‘restorative environment’ concept sees considerable use in the ,environment-behaviour-design field these days. Much of the ,concept’s appeal has to do ,with how ,it helps us to ,relate health to experiences in natural environments. With this paper I offer some,support for efforts to develop,and apply knowledge,about restorative environments,as health,resources. I will also share some,thoughts onwhere,we stand,with research on restorative environments,and where research in the area can go next. More specifically, I will discuss how we define restoration; a general framework for theories about restorative environments; some,requirements of empirical tests of those theories; and the public health vs. therapeutic values of restorative environments. Keywords:Natural environments; restoration; restorative environments; stress
Withdrawal of land from agricultural production is creating possibilities for reafforestation in several areas of Europe. Reafforestation can serve recreational as well as ecological goals. The present study considers the effects of two ecologically significant forest design characteristics, accessibility and vegetation density, on mood, an outcome relevant to recreational planning. It simultaneously addresses the more general question of how changes in mood correspond to movement through an environment. The two forest design variables were manipulated both between and within subjects in a two (high accessibility vs interrupted accessibility) by two (dense vs half-open vegetation) by four (consecutive forest sections) design. The experimental manipulations combined sets of sequential photographic slides with verbal descriptions regarding aspects of accessibility (i.e. presence vs absence of a path, passableness, possibilities for orientation). Subjects (n=98) were randomly sampled residents of Leiden, recruited by telephone and screened for prior hiking experience. All provided seven affective appraisals for two preliminary recreational area sections and then the four experimental forest sections. The affective appraisals could be interpreted in terms of arousal and pleasure dimensions of mood. Arousal and pleasure scores were both affected by the accessibility manipulations in keeping with expectations while the manipulations of vegetation density were somewhat less influential.
The nearby natural environment plays a far more significant role in the well-being of children residing in poor urban environments than has previously been recognized. Using a premove/postmove longitudinal design, this research explores the linkage between the naturalness or restorativeness of the home environment and the cognitive functioning of 17 low-income urban children (aged 7–12 yrs). Both before and after relocation, objective measures of naturalness were used along with a standardized instrument (the Attention Deficit Disorders Evaluation Scale) measuring the children's cognitive functioning. Results show that children whose homes improved the most in terms of greenness following relocation also tended to have the highest levels of cognitive functioning following the move. The implications with respect to policy and design are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A considerable body of folklore and scientific research alludes to the efficacy of the vernacular environment to influence both aesthetic experience and general well-being. To examine explicitly whether stress recovery and/or immunization varies as a function of the roadside environment, 160 college-age participants, both male and female, viewed one of four different video-taped simulated drives through outdoor environments immediately following and preceding mildly stressful events. Overall, it was anticipated that participants who viewed artifact-dominated drives, relative to participants who viewed nature-dominated drives, would show greater autonomic activity indicative of stress (e.g. elevated blood pressure and electrodermal activity), as well as show altered somatic activity indicative of greater negative affect (e.g. elevated electromyographic (EMG) activity over the brow region and decreased activity over the cheek region). In addition, it was expected that participants who viewed nature-dominated drives would experience quicker recovery from stress and greater immunization to subsequent stress than participants who viewed artifact-dominated drives. The overall pattern of results is consistent with both hypotheses and the findings are interpreted to support postulating a sympathetic-specific mechanism that underlies the effect of nature on stress recovery and immunization.
Theory and research dealing with place identity and restorative environments have for the most part proceeded independently. Assuming that emotional- and self-regulation are processes underlying the development of place identity, and that a person's favorite place is an exemplar of environments used in such regulation processes, the present study goes beyond preliminary observations about restorative aspects of favorite places to consider how individuals evaluate their favorite places using terms set out in restorative environments theory. Finnish university students (n=78) evaluated the central square of their city (Tampere) and favorite and unpleasant places of their own designation using the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS), an instrument based on attention restoration theory. Consistent with notions of self-regulation, PRS subscale scores for Being Away, Fascination, Coherence, and Compatibility were all high in the favorite place evaluations, but Coherence and Compatibility were reliably higher than Being Away, which was in turn reliably higher than Fascination. Also, PRS subscale scores for the favorite places were reliably higher than those for the central square, which were in turn higher than those for the unpleasant places. Furthermore, differences were also found in self-reported emotional states associated with each place. The discussion suggests ways to develop further mutually reinforcing relations between restorative environments research and research on place identity.
We compared psychophysiological stress recovery and directed attention restoration in natural and urban field settings using repeated measures of ambulatory blood pressure, emotion, and attention collected from 112 randomly assigned young adults. To vary restoration needs, we had half of the subjects begin the environmental treatment directly after driving to the field site. The other half completed attentionally demanding tasks just before the treatment. After the drive or the tasks, sitting in a room with tree views promoted more rapid decline in diastolic blood pressure than sitting in a viewless room. Subsequently walking in a nature reserve initially fostered blood pressure change that indicated greater stress reduction than afforded by walking in the urban surroundings. Performance on an attentional test improved slightly from the pretest to the midpoint of the walk in the nature reserve, while it declined in the urban setting. This opened a performance gap that persisted after the walk. Positive affect increased and anger decreased in the nature reserve by the end of the walk; the opposite pattern emerged in the urban environment. The task manipulation affected emotional self-reports. We discuss implications of the results for theories about restorative environments and environmental health promotion measures.
Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might dismiss people's desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti-urban bias in conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology suggests that people's desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function, namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.
We tested the hypothesis that exposure to nature stimuli restores depleted voluntary attention capacity and affects selective attention. Before viewing a video of either a natural or an urban environment, 28 subjects first completed a proofreading task to induce mental load and then performed Posner's attention-orienting task. After viewing the video they performed the attention-orienting task a second time. Cardiac inter-beat interval (IBI) was measured continuously to index autonomic arousal. Before the video both groups reacted faster to validly versus invalidly cued targets in the attention-orienting task. After the video, the urban group was still faster on validly versus invalidly cued trials, but in the nature group this difference disappeared. During the video the nature group had a longer mean IBI (lower heart rate) measured as the difference from baseline than the urban group. The results suggest that reduced autonomic arousal during the video engendered less spatially selective attention in the nature group compared to the urban group.
This study is based on a theoretical view which suggests that under increased demands for attention, individuals' capacity to direct attention may become fatigued. Once fatigued, attentional restoration must occur in order to return to an effectively functioning state. An attention-restoring experience can be as simple as looking at nature. The purpose of this study was to explore whether university dormitory residents with more natural views from their windows would score better than those with less natural views on tests of directed attention. Views from dormitory windows of 72 undergraduate students were categorized into four groups ranging from all natural to all built. The capacity to direct attention was measured using a battery of objective and subjective measures. Natural views were associated with better performance on attentional measures, providing support for the proposed theoretical view.
The Leichtag Family Healing Garden at Children's Hospital and Health Center, San Diego was planned and built as a healing environment space for patients, families, and staff. A Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) was conducted to determine whether the garden was meeting the goals of reducing stress, restoring hope and energy, and increasing consumer satisfaction. Results from behavioral observations, surveys, and interviews indicated a number of benefits of the garden. The garden was perceived as a place of restoration and healing, and use was accompanied by increased consumer satisfaction. However, the garden was not utilized as often or as effectively as intended. Children, parents and many staff members recommended changes for the garden, such as the inclusion of more trees and greenery, and more interactive ‘things for kids to do’. In addition, the majority of family members surveyed throughout the hospital did not know about the garden. Based on the findings, recommendations for changes were developed to promote better use of the garden. These research findings can be used to guide the future planning, design, building, and subsequent evaluation of garden environments in children's hospitals and pediatric settings.
Does the widely documented tendency to prefer natural over built environments owe to the perception of greater restorative potential in natural environments? In the present experimental study we tested the mediating role of restoration in environmental preferences. Participants viewed a frightening movie, and then were shown a video of either a natural or a built environment. We used two examples of each type of environment. Participants’ mood ratings were assessed before and after they viewed the frightening movie, and again after viewing the environmental video. Participants also rated the beauty of the environment shown (to indicate preference) and performed a test of concentration after viewing the environmental video. The results indicate that participants perceived the natural environments as more beautiful than the built environments. In addition, viewing natural environments elicited greater improvement in mood and marginally better concentration than viewing built environments. Mediational analyses revealed that affective restoration accounted for a substantial proportion of the preference for the natural over the built environments. Together, these results help substantiate the adaptive function of people's environmental preferences.
Two studies were conducted with the aim of developing a set of rating scale measures of restorative components of environments. In Study 1, 238 Norwegian undergraduates acting as subjects imagined themselves to be either in a nature environment or a city environment which they rated on unipolar scales intended to describe how they experienced the environments. In Study 2 another sample of 157 subjects recruited from the same population of Norwegian undergraduates viewed videos of a forest, park, sea area, city, and a snowy mountain, imagining themselves to be in these environments while performing ratings on the same scales. In both studies factor analyses yielded results in agreement with a theory proposed by Kaplan and Kaplan (1989). However, the being away factor posited by the theory was split into two factors, one with high loadings on rating scales tapping being physically away, the other with high loadings on rating scales tapping being psychologically away. The remaining three factors were defined by rating scales tapping extent, fascination, and compatibility, respectively. Composite measures of the factors had acceptable reliability. Furthermore, as predicted, environments with nature elements generally scored higher than city environments on all measures. Compatibility and fascination predicted preference ratings of the environments, whereas escape and compatibility predicted selfratings of relaxation.
The purpose of this study was to develop and test a self-rating restoration scale (RS) designed to measure the restorative quality of environments. Both the Kaplan and Kaplan [The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective, Cambridge University Press, New York] and Ulrich [Aesthetic and affective response to natural environment, in: I. Altman, J.F. Wohlwill (Eds.), Behavior and Natural Environments, Plenum Press, New York] hypothesize that restorative environments are settings that facilitate the reduction of stress. Over the past decade, an increasing amount of empirical research has also shown that the restorative influences of environments manifest themselves in emotional, physiological, and cognitive responses of humans [J. Environ. Psychol. 11 (1991) 201]. Thus, the RS should cover, at least, these three dimensions. Moreover, the dimension of intended behavior in environments was also included. This RS was examined and revised through a two-phased experimental design. Forty-eight color slides selected from thousands of slides were used as the stimuli and the surrogates for the actual environments in the experiments. These 48 strictly controlled slides represented a proper and comprehensive sample of the six major terrestrial biomes of the world: desert, tundra, grassland, coniferous forest, deciduous forest, and tropical forest [Ecology and Our Endangered Life-Support Systems, Sinauer Associates Publishers, Sunderland], and varied as a function of high and low levels of three physical variables: complexity, openness, and water features. Five experiments with five groups of undergraduate students at Texas A&M University as subjects (total n=505) were conducted to test the RS. Results of exploratory, confirmatory, analysis of moment structures (AMOS), correlation, principal component, and reliability analyses indicated that internal validity, convergent and discriminant validity, convergent and divergent construct validity, and reliability of the RS were all adequate. Thus, the operational definition and the construct of restorativeness developed in this study can be applied to future research on recovery from stress. Hopefully, this theory-derived and data-oriented RS will be eventually applied to various environments by any concerned individuals to examine the result of planning and design practice in terms of a desired state of recovery from stress.
This paper examines the factors which have contributed to Lourdes' attraction for millions as a place of healing: the religious pilgrimage tradition; Lourdes' central role in political, economic, social, and cultural changes in France; belief in miraculous cures reported at Lourdes; and the pilgrim experience. Themes emphasized throughout the paper are physical, mental, and spiritual transformation; historical contingency; the role of faith; place meaning; and a contested reality. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd
Preferences for natural and urban environments can be framed in terms of (1) beliefs about the likelihood of psychological restoration during a walk in each type of environment and (2) the evaluation of restoration given differing restoration needs. We conducted an experiment to test hypotheses about restoration as a basis for environmental preferences. Imagining themselves as attentionally fatigued or fully refreshed, participants (N=101) evaluated recovery, reflection, and social stimulation outcomes. Next, they viewed slides simulating a walk through a forest or an urban center, then rated the likelihood of recovery, reflection, and social stimulation outcomes following such a walk. This procedure was repeated with the second environment. Preference for the forest over the city was twice as strong given attentional fatigue. The greater likelihood of restoration in the natural environment in conjunction with more positive evaluation of recovery when fatigued appears to explain this pattern. The results have implications for environmental preference conceptualizations and our understanding of the relationship between preference and restoration.