Measure the Restorative Effects of Diverse Urban and Greenspace Environments through the Use of Virtual Reality and Real World Environments: An Analysis of Physiological Responses and Affect

Emily Grant (University of Waterloo)

A sustainable city must encompass elements that support the health and well-being of its residents. In the past three decades, much research has demonstrated the health and well-being benefits of exposure to greenspace through its stress reducing properties and ability to improve mood (Velarde et al., 2007; Ulrich et al., 1991). However, many studies in this field have compared large rural forests to unpleasant urban environments devoid ofnature and character. The highly contrasted environments have been identified as a weak point in this research field (Pearson, & Craig, 2014). Thus, research is needed to assess the restorative effect across a continuum of environments from lush forests to pleasant urban environments. Using virtual reality participants were exposed to one of four environments, two forest environments (one sparsely treed and one lush with mature vegetation) and two urban environments (one colorful urban shopping area and one downtown city core with grey skyscrapers) for 15 minutes. A between-subjects experimental design was used with dependent measures of self-reported affect and stress, as well as physiological measures (including: heart rate, heart rate variability, blood pressure, and skin conductance) to determine restorativeness. A one-way analysis of variance was performed on a sample of 154. The results showed significant differences in affective responses, heart rate, and systolic blood pressure between the downtown urban environment and the other environments. No difference between the urban shopping area and sparsely treed forest environment were found. These results suggest that using highly contrasting environments may not be the best methodology for studying the restorative effect of greenspaces. A replication of this study using real world environments was then completed with a sample of 140. Results from both studies will be presented, however, at this time the real world study results are under analysis and cannot be shared in this abstract.