Sustainable informal learning environments are increasingly recognized as critical components of educational architecture, yet their environmental and behavioral dynamics remain underexplored. Informal learning spaces (ILS) support flexible, student-driven learning beyond formal classrooms. While prior research often isolates individual environmental factors, integrated multi-domain interactions and reciprocal occupant–space dynamics receive less attention. This study adopts a dual-perspective analytical framework, combining spatial analysis and student surveys (n = 1048) across 130 ILS in five academic buildings in China. The findings highlight several environmental dimensions influencing student experience. One extracted factor combines acoustic and thermal comfort with learning atmosphere—domains seldom grouped together—indicating their collective relevance to student experience. Additionally, spatial openness and natural connectivity further enhance student experience. Importantly, the results show that frequently used spaces receive lower physical quality ratings, group collaboration areas outperform individual study zones, and spontaneously formed spaces—informally appropriated, unplanned areas such as corridors or leftover corners—score lowest. These patterns may reflect mismatches between spatial supply and use intensity, institutional investment priorities, and differing levels of student autonomy and environmental control. This research extends conventional post-occupancy evaluations by introducing a comprehensive dual-perspective framework that links spatial characteristics with user-driven dynamics, and by identifying the combined effects of multi-domain physical environmental and supportive elements on student experience. The insights offer empirical grounding and actionable strategies for campus planners and architects, including prioritizing sensory comfort, enhancing spatial diversity, and supporting student-led adaptations to promote sustainable learning environments.

Background: The rise in winter sports following the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has led to a surge in snowboarding enthusiasts. However, domestic snowboard coach training remains at a rudimentary stage, resulting in substandard instructor competencies that create negative customer experiences and seriously impede the development of China's snowboarding industry.Purpose: To address these coaching quality challenges, this study developed a three-dimensional pedagogical model and examined how snowboard coaches' teaching competencies influence participants' loyalty, operationalized as intention to continue lessons.Methods: Using a mixed methods design, the study collected survey responses from 250 recreational snowboarders at two major ski resorts in China, supplemented by on-site coaching observations. Quantitative analyses, including correlation, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and quantile regression, were employed to examine the relationship between the proposed three-dimensional coaching model and participants' loyalty.Results: Factor analysis refined the traditional interpersonal-technical-pedagogical framework into three dimensions: Teaching Interaction and Feedback (TIF), Motion Guidance and Optimization (MGO), and Effectiveness Assessment and Customization (EAC). Together with overall satisfaction, these competencies showed significant positive associations with loyalty (R² = 0.754). Quantile regression revealed heterogeneous effects across loyalty levels: TIF and MGO exerted the strongest influence at lower loyalty levels, EAC became more salient toward median-upper quantiles, and overall satisfaction had notable effects only at the very lowest loyalty levels.Conclusion: Snowboard coaches' competencies function as an interdependent system that supports learners psychological needs in distinct ways across different engagement levels. Teaching interaction and motion guidance are most critical for establishing a supportive climate and skill clarity in the early stages, while effectiveness assessment becomes increasingly important as learners seek personalized progression. Overall satisfaction plays a disproportionately important role at the lowest loyalty levels, underscoring the need to reduce onboarding frictions and strengthen perceptions of safety. These findings refine Self-Determination Theory applications in outdoor sport education and highlight that adaptive, segment-aware coaching strategies are essential for promoting retention and sustainable participation in winter sports.

University students face rising mental health pressures, making restorative environmental perception (REP) in campus forests critical for psychological recovery. While environmental factors are recognized contributors, Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) theory emphasizes that environmental and social processes are interdependent. Within this context, informal social interaction (ISI)—low-effort encounters such as greetings or small talk—represent a key social dimension that may complement environmental restoration by fostering comfort and embedded affordances. However, most studies examine these factors separately, often using coarse measures that overlook heterogeneity in restorative mechanisms. This study investigates how environmental-exposure and social–environmental context dimensions jointly shape REP in campus forests, focusing on distributional patterns beyond average effects. Using a Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) approach, 30 students photographed 1294 tree-dominant scenes on a forest-rich campus. Environmental features were quantified via semantic segmentation, and ISI was rated alongside REP. Quantile regression estimated effects across the REP distribution. Three distributional patterns emerged. First, blue exposure and ISI acted as reliable resources, consistently enhancing REP with distinct profiles. Second, green exposure functioned as a threshold-dependent resource, with mid-quantile attenuation but amplified contributions in highly restorative scenes. Third, anthropogenic and demographic factors created conditional barriers with distribution-specific effects. Findings demonstrate that campus forest restoration operates through differentiated socio-ecological mechanisms rather than uniform pathways, informing strategies for equitable, restoration-optimized management. More broadly, the distributional framework offers transferable insights for urban forests as socio-ecological infrastructures supporting both human well-being and ecological resilience.