By Qunyue Liu, Xiabin Lin, Qin Wang, Yuxiang Lan, Zhipeng Zhu, Xiong Yao, Yaling Gao, Yuanping Shen, Meng Huang, and Hongxin Wang.
Nature, such as parks, forests, and water features, is known to help people relax and recover from stress. Yet, urban environments are growing, and they often lack natural spaces that help people recover from stress. But we don’t fully understand how different types of natural environments—like wild nature, urban parks, and spaces with water—affect stress recovery.
This study shows that different types of nature can help people relax and improve their mental health. We investigated how wild nature, tended nature (such as parks, lawns, paths, pools, and waterfalls), and urban spaces affect people’s preferences, their recovery from stress, and how they visually engage with these spaces.
In the experiment, we randomly assigned 280 participants to one of seven different nature settings (Figure 1). We tracked their eye movements to understand how they visually experienced these spaces. The results showed that the participants rated wild nature, along with tended nature settings like pools and waterfalls, as more restorative compared to urban environments and plazas. Interestingly, while experts preferred certain spaces more than the general public, both experts and the general public perceive similar restorative benefits from wild forest and designed park settings. Notably, non-experts had a stronger visual response to these settings.
These findings highlight the importance of designing public spaces that cater to both experts and the general public. Nature, especially spaces with water, plays an important role in reducing stress. Urban planners and landscape designers can use this knowledge to create public spaces that benefit everyone, regardless of their background or expertise.
Relational Thinking 