In recent years, children’s use of mobile phones has grown rapidly, which might lead to an increase in mental stress and negatively affect their health. Despite increasing evidence that horticultural activity can provide significant health benefits, few scientific evidence-based studies are currently available regarding these benefits to children’s health and wellbeing in schools. Therefore, this study aims to determine the potential benefits of horticultural activity for children from both psychological and physiological perspectives. Twenty-six elementary school students (mean age, 8.12 ± 0.21 years) were asked to perform a plant-related task and a mobile game task for 5 min. During both tasks, physiological sensors were used to measure the participants’ heart rate variability, skin conductance, and skin temperature. Additionally, the participants’ emotional responses were assessed using semantic differential and State–Trait Anxiety Inventory tests immediately after each task. Results revealed that, compared with the mobile game task, participants’ health statuses were positively correlated with the horticultural task, including a considerable decrease in skin conductance and sympathetic nervous activity, together with a marginal increase in parasympathetic nervous activity. Such responses suggested that horticultural activity increased relaxation and decreased feelings of stress. Furthermore, the horticultural activity was associated with a substantial increment in comfort, naturalness, relaxation, and cheerfulness feelings, as well as a significant reduction in depression and a reduction in total anxiety levels. Given these positive benefits, horticultural activity may provide a great contribution to children’s healthy life at school, prompt psychological relaxation and minimize mental stress relative to smartphone games.

Objectives: Exposure to nature or to green space has positive mental health benefits. Closing of parks and green spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced options for mental health and well-being benefits and could have a greater impact on vulnerable populations, especially the elderly. The present study, therefore, explores the physiopsychological impacts of indirect contact with nature, using forest imagery, on the brain activity and autonomic nervous systems of elderly people. Study Design: A within-subject design experiment was used. Methods: Thirty-four participants aged 82.9 ± 0.78 years were asked to look at bamboo and urban images for 2 min. During the visual stimulation, α relative waves were measured using electroencephalography as an indicator of brain activity. Heart rate variability and skin conductance (SC) responses were utilized as indicators of arousal. Afterward, psychological responses were evaluated using the semantic differential and the Profile of Mood States questionnaires. Results: Visual stimulation with bamboo image induced a significant increase in α relative waves and parasympathetic nervous activity and a significant decrease in SC. In addition, a significant increase in perceptions of “comfortable,” “relaxed,” “cheerful,” and “vigorous” feelings was observed. Conclusions: Indirect contact with nature enhances the physiological and psychological conditions of the elderly. Findings can be used to guide the new design, renewal, and modification of the living environments of the elderly and those who are unable to get outside.

The importance of multi-sensory perception in constructing human landscape experiences has been increasingly emphasized in contemporary urban life. The aim of this study is to explore aural-visual interaction attributes that may influence people’s perceived overall soundscape comfort in urban green spaces (UGSs). To achieve this, a total of 12 perceptive indicators were identified from the existing literature to evaluate people’s perceived visual and acoustic attributes and types of sound sources, and their relations to the perceived soundscape comfort. 268 responses were obtained in a questionnaire-based survey conducted in five UGSs in Chengdu Outer Ring Ecological Zone. This was done whilst a typical objective acoustic indicator, sound level, was used as a mediator for potential changes on these relations within different sound level ranges. Results suggested that a low level of environmental sound does not correspond to higher ratings on the overall soundscape comfort. It was also found that the environmental sound level of 77 dBA was a turning point in the relation between people’s soundscape comfort and its influential indicators in UGSs. A set of six models was then provided to describe the overall soundscape comfort and its contributing indicators in aural-visual interactions, respectively, in sound level ranges below and above 77dBA.

Introduction: Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been used to address a wide range of urban environmental challenges, an important aspect of which is to improve human health and well-being. However, most relevant studies focus either on what positive influences nature may have or on identifying what natural factors can have these benefits. Few have investigated the sensory composition of nature and the effects of nature in different sensory aspects on human health. Setting out from the multi-sensory perspective, this study aims to explore human behavior and emotional response from visual and aural contact with urban nature.Methods: Taking Jiangjia Art Garden in Chengdu as an example, natural attributes such as its visual (landscape) and aural (sound source) characteristics as well as people’s activities (behavioral responses) were measured by on-site mapping analysis. This was done while a questionnaire-based survey was conducted to investigate people’s emotional responses regarding their overall satisfaction, pleasantness, calm, and agreeableness.Results: The results indicated that nature-dominated visual landscapes such as grassland, waterscapes, and woodlands, as well as natural sounds such as bird sounds, chirp sounds, and wind sounds were found to be positively correlated to the vitality of activities and people’s emotional status. Regarding behavioral responses, it was shown that grasslands and woodlands are more likely to be attractive places for recreation, and the vitality measured became extremely high when these two were paired with lakes. As for the emotional responses, people’s perceived overall satisfaction, calm, and agreeableness were equally reflected in their behavioral patterns, suggesting a strong relationship with natural factors.Discussion: The research findings were visually presented in behavior and emotional maps to provide direct cues of informing the future design of high-quality urban green spaces and promoting the application of aural-visual experience in the design of urban nature areas.

As cities progress into high-quality developments, the demand for urban parks that enhance residents’ well-being and sustainability is increasing. Traditional visual-centric design methods no longer suffice. Given that vision and hearing are the primary sensory pathways through which people perceive their environment, exploring their relationship with landscape experiences offers a novel perspective for optimizing the audiovisual perception quality of urban parks. This study explores the relationship between visual and auditory elements and landscape experiences to optimize urban parks’ sensory quality. Using visual perception, soundscape perception, sound source perception, and behavioral vitality, this study evaluates the audiovisual perception quality of a representative wetland park in Chengdu’s ring ecological zone. By quantifying relationships between audiovisual characteristics, behavioral vitality, and emotional feedback, several emotional assessment models were constructed. The results show that lawns, pavements, and sound pressure levels significantly impact vitality. A sound pressure level of 77 dB has been identified as a critical threshold in emotional perception models. Consequently, distinct emotional prediction models can be employed to enhance landscape design across various sound pressure level zones. This research provides scientific evidence and flexible strategies for designing urban open spaces that improve landscape experiences based on multisensory perception.

Environmental perception studies have long been constrained by research scales due to the difficulties in obtaining users’ perceptive data and constructing their relation to environmental attributes. With the help of big data from street view images, this study compares the visual comfort of streets across four Chinese megacities with evidently distinct geographical characteristics. A multi-method approach involving traditional comfort measurements, image analysis based on deep learning algorithms and spatial mapping using geographic information systems was used to investigate the visual components of urban streets at the city scale and their influential mechanisms. In general, the four cities ranked by visual comfort were Beijing first, then Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The results also suggested that the spatial distribution of the four cities’ street visual comfort is obviously different. In Shanghai and Beijing, streets with a higher comfort level are mostly concentrated within the central city, while the highly comfort streets are mostly distributed along the coast and rivers in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Thus, it is reasonable to speculate that the streets’ visual comfort relates significantly to their urban planning and construction process. Moreover, seven indicators have been identified as influential to street comfort, among which ‘vegetation’, ‘terrain’ and ‘rider’ are positive indicators, while ‘architecture’, ‘pedestrians’, ‘motorcycles’ and ‘bicycles’ have negative influences. Comparing street comfort indicators of the four case study cities, it was observed that ‘vegetation’ and ‘terrain’ have the most consistent positive influences across cities, while the high visibility of ‘building’ on streets is most likely to lead to a low level of perceived comfort. The research outcomes provide applicable cues for large-scale street evaluation research and illustrate an efficient street design approach that can both respond to local characteristics and human perceptive needs.