Abstract
Nature and health researchers have often suggested that nature induces better psychological and physical health responses than urban environments, especially with healthy ecosystems in nature. However, research that has empirically documented the daily benefits of physical and psychological health in rural landscapes is scarce. This study explores how rural landscapes could provide better health benefits than the built environment in daily life. The research involved on-site data collection with a set of psychological indicators (e.g., restorativeness, preference, emotion) and physical indicators (e.g., brain waves, heart rate) to compare the rural and the built environments. A total of 169 subjects took part in the study. We analyzed health indicators through analysis of variance to show the difference in water landscapes in rural areas relative to the built environment after the participants experienced the environments. The results showed that subjects could release stress and felt a greater sense of restorativeness, pleasure, and arousal in rural areas than in the built environment. Subjects preferred the rural landscape more than the built environment. To conclude, this study explains the rural landscape and its health-related benefits in Taiwan.
Modern life separates people from nature. This is also true in Taiwan, despite Taiwan having diverse natural resources, ranging from mountains in rural landscapes to flatland sightseeing areas in urban and suburban settings. What we have known is nature helps people who live in the urban “escape” and recover themselves. Agritourism farms provide a way for urban residents to get closer to nature again. They have become the emerging destinations for leisure activities outside cities, where visitors can experience a variety of rural and traditional agricultural life and landscapes, mimicking patterns of the past and meeting agricultural functions. The value of agritourism is often evaluated by the activities provided, and what naturalistic and wild local landscapes could bring to visitors is often neglected. To date, seldom on-site research verified the benefits of physio-psychological well-being on agritourism farms. Leaving these gaps of knowledge unanswered will lose opportunities to preserve or create natural landscapes that benefit visitors and the ecosystem.
Health has been recognized as one of the goals of pursuing outdoor leisure activities for families (Zawadka, 2019). It has been proved that components of the environment are critical factors influencing mental health, physical health, and well-being. The evidence of green and blue spaces in the built environment providing health benefits has been well researched and established (Bratman et al., 2019; Gascon et al., 2017; Hartig et al., 2014); the health effects of biodiversity have also been researched recently (Aerts et al., 2018; Sandifer et al., 2015). These health effects of natural landscapes have been proposed as a psychological ecosystem service and distinguished from cultural services (Bratman et al., 2019).
Agritourism farms are usually in rural or suburban areas with high levels of naturalness and elements (e.g., water features) that support human health and ecological functions. Although many studies have discussed the ecosystem services of rural areas that maintain biodiversity, ecological functions, land use, and sustainability (Liu et al., 2019), a limited amount of empirical research values the aspects of the subject’s level on psychological well-being in ecosystem services in rural areas (Schröter et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2021). Besides lacking evidence about how agritourism farm landscapes impact human health, the research about the psychological ecosystem services is deficient from four angles: the natural features (the configuration and composition of biodiversity), the dose of nature of time and duration, the experience, and the specific groups of the population (Bratman et al., 2019). The central concept of mentioning ecosystem service between the agricultural landscape and urban is to use ecological indicators to classify the difference among the environments. Moreover, this research aims to fill the gap in knowledge about natural features: the extent to which agritourism landscapes provide psychophysiological benefits regarding health benefits on-site.
Psychological health benefits of nature
Attention restoration has been emphasized in the relationship between landscape and health because of its necessity in performing daily tasks (Kaplan and Berman, 2010). Studies have illustrated a higher level of perceived restorativeness in urban green spaces (Tyrväinen et al., 2014; Van den Berg et al., 2014) and blue spaces (Völker et al., 2018; White et al., 2010) than in built settings. The detailed features of natural landscapes, for example, plant species richness (Fuller et al., 2007), complexity of the scene (Van den Berg et al., 2016), and naturalness (Liu et al., 2018), contribute to attention functioning as well. In addition, the naturalness of landscapes is associated with people’s preferences for the environment. Daily landscapes with natural features, such as vegetation, trees, and water attributes, have been shown to receive higher preference than built environments (Herzog and Bosley, 1992; Ode et al., 2009; Peron et al., 1998; Ulrich, 1981). Furthermore, the higher landscape preference for hills and lakes is associated with greater restorativeness (Purcell et al., 2001; Van den Berg et al., 2003). On the other hand, the situation and environment could directly influence human emotions spontaneously as people experience them. Pleasure, arousal, and dominance were the basic reactions with the level of evaluation, potency, and activity that were stimulated by the environment (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). Research has shown that nature, as compared with urban settings, can foster a positive emotional state (Bowler et al., 2010; Hartig et al., 2003; Korpela et al., 2014). Previous research focuses on the psychological benefits that result from contact with nature; can the agritourism landscapes in Taiwan provide the same psychological benefits in those ecosystems?
Physical health and nature
Biofeedback instruments have been used as objective measurements to evaluate people’s feelings in different environments. One study found a correlation between preference for nature and decreasing emotional intensity as detected physically by muscle tension (Hartig and Staats, 2006). Another study found that after viewing wilderness scenes, participants’ alpha brain waves increased, and their blood volume pulse (BVP) decreased; both results indicated that exposure to the wilderness induced relaxation and relieved stress (Chang et al., 2008). Alpha waves increased even more in nature settings with water than in urban environments (Ulrich, 1981). Compared with the urban landscape, exposure to a waterside environment decreases heart rate (HR) and selective attention, which means humans can pay effortless attention to nature (Laumann et al., 2003). Yu et al. (2018) pointed out how a garden, waterscape, and trellis in agricultural recreation areas could increase perceived restorativeness and alpha waves while decreasing HR and electromyography (EMG) results. In contrast, viewing urban scenes decreases alpha waves (Ulrich, 1981). Although Ulrich’s (1981) research was conducted in the laboratory (participants’ physical responses were detected while they viewed urban and nature videos), the present study raises the question of whether similar physical or psychological benefits arise on-site in an agricultural landscape with different levels of human intervention.
Based on previous research, we infer that connection to the rural field acts as an opportunity for urban residents to escape from pressure, and limited research has confirmed this. Chiang and Chang (2009) found from perceptions of ecological structures that built areas and bodies of water in rural areas increase HR, which might explain the contrasting emotional states involving forest areas—a sense of physical relaxation via EMG as well as a sense of fear for an occasional psychological state. Moreover, another study assigned participants with exhaustion disorder to experience urban landscapes, forest landscapes, and forest lakes and found that participants perceived forest landscapes to have a greater restorative effect; participants had higher preferences for these landscapes and better HRs and diastolic blood pressure than when experiencing urban environments (Sonntag-Öström et al., 2014). Furthermore, Lee et al. (2009) reported that viewing forest landscapes increased objective relaxation, as well as subjective refreshment.
In sum, naturalness in different areas is relevant to creating the characteristics of an agritourism farm and providing ecosystem services for support, provision, regulation, and culture regarding the biosphere and human health, which might influence tourists’ choices of destinations. Hence, the psychological and physical experiences that agritourism farms provide are worth exploring by comparing the health benefits of different landscapes. This helps bridge the knowledge gap to enable the creation of healthy landscapes for landscape designers, management, and tourism. Above all, the research on psychophysical responses and brain activations indicates that natural environments, especially those with waterscapes, provide better psychological and physical benefits to humans compared with the built environments. This research examines the extent to which agritourism farms and settings for rural landscapes in different forms and styles provide different levels of physical and psychological health effects to humans. The study demonstrated the experimental process of measuring the benefits of physio-psychological well-being. Moreover, field experiments are used to prove, through scientific physical measurements and psychological scales, how immediate contact with rural landscapes can effectively relieve stress, recover attention, and boost positive emotions.
Materials and Methods
Research site selection
Research sites were selected that contained water bodies, either natural streams or ponds, that represent an essential role in agriculture in rural and suburban areas in Taiwan. The rural landscapes were composed of vegetation in its natural forms and appeared with fairly dynamic vitality. The suburban landscapes contained manmade vegetation with high levels of maintenance, which reflects the use of the agricultural irrigation system in the past. Our research question is to present those realistic environments and bring out the physio-psychological well-being benefits relative to urban. Those environments could tell the difference with busy street views and buildings representing a busy and stressful daily life as the control group. Therefore, four agritourism farms were chosen to simulate rural landscapes and rural life and one site from the built environment, were selected in Taiwan (Table 1).
Examples of the rural, suburban, and urban environments.
The three landscape types were distinguished from the ecological perspectives using landscape structure. Researchers analyzed the landscape structure using the composition of land cover type within a radius of 100 m, and the percentage of patch type in the landscape index (percentage of landscape, or PLAND) was calculated. To accomplish this, the satellite images were taken from Google Earth images with eCognition 9.0 (a software that helps map the patches on remote sensing images), and five patch types were identified: artificial surfaces, farmland, grassland, trees, and water.
The sites selected to represent rural, suburban, and urban landscapes could be differentiated by the percentage of trees and artificial surfaces. Two landscapes were covered by trees at 70% and 93%, and the sum of artificial surfaces was relatively low (<8%). These were categorized as rural landscapes. Two other landscapes had tree cover rates of ≈66%, and the sum of artificial surfaces and grassland were 15% and 28%; they were categorized as suburban landscapes. The urban built environment had the highest cover rate of artificial surfaces (65%), the lowest tree cover rate (21%), and no farmland cover.
The experiment locations at the sites were selected on the major pathways, avoiding locations where pedestrians normally gathered. Researchers set up the tent and the experiment equipment in the selected experimental areas of different types of environments presented in Table 1. Participants sat in the tent and after experiencing the sites, they were asked to fill out the questionnaires.
Participants
Convenience sampling was used for the on-site experiments; researchers recruited participants through verbal requests and by posting flyers on rural farms. Visitors and pedestrians aged 20 to 65 were eligible to participate, and each participant received a 100 NTD gift card as an incentive after completing the experiment. In the built environment, it was difficult to recruit pedestrians to stop for the experiment during the daytime on weekdays, therefore researchers recruited participants online at this site. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of National Taiwan University (Approval number: 201703HS024), and each participant signed a consent form before the experiment.
Measurements
Participants’ physical responses were measured using a biofeedback instrument, the ProComp Infiniti System (version 6.1.0), which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The equipment and corresponding software can filter noise and extract outlier biofeedback data for statistical analysis. EMG, HR, and electroencephalography (EEG) were the physical indicators used to test the relationship between the environment and health.
EMG detects muscle tension on the forehead; the corrugator muscle reflects emotions. When individuals feel negative emotions, they frown, and the forehead muscle tension increases (Dimberg et al., 2002). Sensors were attached to the middle of the forehead above the front of the eyebrows.
HR is widely used to describe objective stress levels. The faster the HR, the more stressed the individual is. We used BVP to measure the interbeat intervals and transformed it to heartbeats per minute. The BVP sensor was attached to the left pointer finger.
EEG describes the activities of brain waves. We measured alpha waves (8 to 12 Hz) because they represent a relaxed mental state, when one is in a physical state of awareness and calm. We attached the sensors to the forehead (Fp1 and Fp2) because it is hairless, which makes conducting on-site experiments easy (Thought Technology Ltd., n.d.).
Psychological responses were recorded with paper questionnaires comprising three sections: the perceived restorativeness scale, preferences, and emotions.
The perceived restorativeness scale (PRS) measures the potential of individuals to perceive the attention restoration effect from environments; a short-form PRS (Berto, 2005) was used in this study. Within the short-form scale, each item assesses one aspect of the restorative characteristics from attention restoration theory (Kaplan, 1995): the feeling of being away from life, fascination with the environment, compatibility, scope, and coherence in the environment. The scale was evaluated with a five-point Likert scale, with 1 meaning not at all and 5 meaning very much, and the total scores ranged from 5 to 25.
Preference was assessed with the single question “How much do you like the landscape?” and assessed via a five-point Likert scale.
Emotions. The study used scales by Russell and Pratt (1980) to describe participants’ levels of pleasure and arousal from their experiences at the sites. The items were assessed on a nine-point Likert scale, with 1 representing the most unpleasant and the sleepiest and 9 being the most pleasant and arousing.
Procedure
In each experiment, on arrival, the researchers greeted participants, explained the procedures of the experiment, and asked for participants’ consent. Next, the researchers helped participants put on the sensors for the biofeedback equipment. The procedure started with a 1-min rest stage in which participants were asked to close their eyes and rest. Researchers started recording physical responses at the beginning of this stage. After 1 min, participants were asked to observe and describe their surroundings and feelings about the environment verbally for 2 min, which assisted them in concentrating on observing and experiencing the environment. Researchers simultaneously recorded participants’ remarks. After the observation stage, participants were asked to view and experience the environment (and be relaxed), which lasted 3 min. After 3 min, the experience stage was over, and researchers stopped recording physical responses. In the last stage, participants were asked to fill out the psychological questionnaire. Researchers then took off the biofeedback sensors, wiped off the gel, and gave participants the gift cards to end the procedure (Fig. 1).
The experimental procedures of physical and psychological measuring processes.
Citation: HortScience 57, 6; 10.21273/HORTSCI16542-22
Data analysis
The study used statistical analysis to compare the different health effects to which participants responded after experiencing the different landscapes. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the differences between physical and psychological health effects at different stages of the experiment for different landscape types. Statistical analysis was performed using Statistical Product and Service Solutions version 25.
Results
A total of 169 valid subjects were collected. In total, 52.1% were men (n = 88), with one subject missing gender data. Participants’ ages ranged from 20 to 65; 30.2% of participants were aged between 20 and 25, 12.4% were between 26 and 30, 10% were between 31 and 35, 13% were between 36 and 40, 10.7% were aged between 41 and 45, 7.7% were between 46 and 50, 7.1% were between 51 and 55, 5.9% were between 56 and 60, and 3% of participants were older than 60 years. A total of 53.8% of participants held bachelor’s degrees, and 18.9% held master’s degrees.
Descriptive statistics of physical responses in the three environmental categories
Table 2 shows the changes in participants’ physical responses in different experimental stages. The values of EMG, HR, and alpha waves in the three environments showed similar patterns. The average values of EMG were the lowest in the resting stage, the values increased in the stages of observing and describing feelings about the environment, and decreased in the experience stage in rural and suburban areas. The second experience stages in the urban area reached the highest values of EMG. The highest HR level was observing and describing feelings about the environment. The lowest happened in the first experience stage in all three environments. The average values of EMG, HR, and alpha brain waves in urban landscapes were the highest among the three environments.
Descriptive statistics of physical health responses in each stage in three environments.
As participants opened their eyes and experienced the environments for 1 min, their alpha brain waves decreased, and the average values of the alpha brain waves were similar in rural and suburban areas, although the alpha brain waves decreased in the second experience stage in the urban environment. Table 2 indicates that subjects felt more relaxed in suburban landscapes than in rural or urban landscapes.
Physical responses to the environment
To what extent does experiencing the environment benefit participants? We first analyzed whether there were significant differences in participants’ EMG, HR, and EEG responses under the following circumstances: 1) the deviation between the 1-min experience (E1) and the rest stage (R), and 2) the deviation between the 2-min experience (E2) and R. The 1-min experience represents the stage in which participants focused on the scenes in the moment, and the 2-min experience represents the stage in which participants were still in the experience condition but with the feelings being less fresh.
First, we found statistically significant differences in participants’ EMGs based on E1 minus R, F (2, 166) = 9.62, P < 0.001. The results of the Games-Howell post hoc tests showed that participants in the pond landscapes (n = 71, M = 1.99, SD = 2.09) had significantly lower increases in EMG than in the natural waterscapes (n = 67, M = 3.99, SD = 3.97) and the built environment (n = 31, M = 4.71, SD = 4.15), indicating a smaller increase in muscle tension responses. HR showed a significant difference in the ANOVA for E1 minus R, F (2, 166) = 3.44, P = 0.034; however, the results did not display a difference through the post hoc tests between the environments. The EEG data did not show any statistically significant differences in the ANOVA.
Second, for the differences between E2 and R, the ANOVA indicated a significant effect in EMG, F (2, 166) = 11.3, P < 0.001. Games-Howell post hoc tests showed that the increases of EMG in the pond landscapes (n = 71, M = 2.08, SD = 2.03) were significantly lower than in the natural waterscapes (n = 67, M = 3.48, SD = 3.61) and the built environment (n = 31, M = 5.28, SD = 4.18). There were no significant differences in HR, but there were slight significant differences in EEG responses between the environments, F (2, 166) = 3.11, P = 0.047. The results of the analysis are summarized in Table 3.
The differences in physical responses between the experience and rest stages in the three environments.
The results suggest that the participants experienced a significantly smaller increase in forehead muscle tension during the entire experience stage for suburban landscapes than for urban or rural landscapes. Participants also experienced significantly lower HR during the first minute of the experience stage for the three landscape types; however, a larger decrease in left alpha waves was found during the second section of the experience stage for the three landscape types, indicating that participants were less calm and relaxed during this period.
Psychological responses to the three different environments
Are rural landscapes more beneficial than the built environment? To answer this question, we compared participants’ overall psychological feelings based on their experiences of the three different landscapes. Table 4 shows the ANOVA results, which indicate that there are significant differences in perceived restorativeness in the different environment types [F (2, 166) = 55.78, P < 0.001, η2 = 0.40]. The results of the Scheffe post hoc tests showed that participants felt more restored in natural stream landscapes (n = 67, M = 21.48, SD = 2.87) and pond landscapes (n = 71, M = 20.72, SD = 2.93) than in the built environment (n = 31, M = 14.71, SD = 3.73). Participants preferred the rural and suburban landscapes to the urban landscape [F (2, 166) = 54.30, P < 0.001, η2 = 0.40]. The same trends were found for the emotions of pleasure and arousal; participants felt a higher level of pleasure [F (2, 166) = 50.39, P < 0.001, η2 = 0.38] and arousal [F (2, 166) = 8.54, P = 0.000, η2 = 0.09] in natural stream landscapes and pond landscapes than in the built environment.
The differences in psychological responses in the three environments
We found that participants perceived greater restorativeness, had a higher preference for, and felt greater pleasure and aroused feelings in rural and suburban landscapes than in urban landscapes. Those findings could infer those environments provide more perceived naturalness and attractive elements than urban ones, capturing our indirect attention, eliciting our preference, and feeling more comfortable. The findings strongly suggest that agricultural landscapes are more restorative than urban landscape. Therefore, these psychological variables were also weak to medium associations with environment types.
Key results
In this study, we examined the extent to which the landscapes of rural, suburban, and urban settings provide physical and psychological health benefits. Our findings agree with theory and related research (Berman et al., 2012; Berto, 2005; Hartig et al., 2003; Hartig and Staats, 2006; Sonntag-Öström et al., 2014) and can be summarized by two phenomena. Physically, participants experienced greater reductions in forehead muscle tension (EMG) in the suburban pond landscape than in the other two landscapes. Psychologically, participants reported greater perceived restorativeness and preference, and higher levels of arousal and pleased feelings, in rural and suburban landscapes than in the built environment. We did not find significant differences in HR and EEG results between different landscapes.
Contributions to the field of research
Physical effects of rural, suburban, and urban landscapes.
Different waterscapes in agricultural landscapes induce different responses. This study found that suburban landscapes with ponds form a static, rich, and pleasant scene, provided a relaxing experience and a decrease in tension. On the other hand, dynamic bodies of water like waterfalls are associated with active, vital, and cheerful feelings (Park and Jo, 2016). Although these are different forms of waterscapes, the small-scale waterfall used in previous research is similar to the natural stream used in the present study, which explains why the pond landscapes provided a greater reduction in facial muscle tension than the natural stream, reflecting the relaxation in emotions.
Visual access and penetration are strongly and negatively correlated with peoples’ feelings of fear and danger (Herzog and Kutzli, 2002). Therefore, well-maintained and artificial landscapes with visual access to a larger area of the landscape provides a weaker sense of danger and, thus, promotes greater physical relaxation than the natural streams with high tree density and low potential to see through space. The more likely primary source of relaxation rests in the experience of visualizing actual nature, which releases stress as indicated by cortisol, diastolic blood pressure, and pulse rate (Lee et al., 2009).
The findings of HR in this study showed no differences among landscapes in the post hoc test. This runs contrary to previous research, in which participants’ HRs were significantly lower after they viewed forest landscapes (Lee et al., 2009; Sonntag-Öström et al., 2014). One likely reason for the incongruent outcomes could be the age ranges and the gender difference of the participants. Although Lee et al. (2009) had male participants ranging from 20 to 23 and Sonntag-Öström et al. (2014) had female participants ranging from 24 to 55, this study had both male and female participants aged 20 to 65. The slower HRmax of elder participants and the faster HRmax of younger participants offset the effects of the environments (Tanaka et al., 2001).
Psychological effects of rural, suburban, and urban landscapes.
Our findings concur with the results of previous studies: nature with waterscapes influences participants’ restorativeness responses and preferences (Hartig and Staats, 2006; Tang et al., 2017; Ulrich et al., 1991; Van den Berg et al., 2014; White et al., 2010) more than urban landscapes. Rural sites with waterscapes of natural and artificial forms are both highly preferred by participants for their ability to offer a greater sense of restorativeness and more positive emotions than urban settings. This finding is aligned with research showing that natural landscapes with water rated higher for preference and perceived restorativeness (Wilkie and Stavridou, 2013). Concerning forms of waterscapes, it has been found that waterscapes evaluated with higher wilderness were rated with higher preference and higher levels of aesthetic value than highly managed waterscapes (Junker and Buchecker, 2008; Van den Berg and Koole, 2006).
Although this study did not find statistically significant differences in psychological effects between the natural stream in the rural area and the pond in the suburban area, the results showed the same trend as previous studies. However, research has shown different outcomes about the feeling of pleasure related to waterscapes regarding their movement. Toet et al. (2011) argued that the dynamic nature of water’s texture arouses one’s emotions as it is interesting; however, the speed of dynamic water could cause a slightly unpleasant feeling. Natural streams enrich various biodiversity resources and are considered wilderness for humans, presenting environments that are unfamiliar and unsafe to participants. By contrast, rural ponds are well-maintained and safe. Unsurprisingly, the limitation of data collection affects the findings of the study.
Limitations
Because of the use of on-site data collection, we tested only four agritourism farms that represented typical landscapes with water features to analyze the healthy psychological responses in the ecological service systems. The water features still could appear in urban; therefore, future research could consider the composition and configuration of different landscape elements surrounding urban, which might influence health benefits. Other factors related to the on-site experiments, for example, the weather conditions and the passersby, may differ between experiments and sites. Nevertheless, researchers controlled the situations to be within acceptable ranges, for example, avoiding rainy days or providing shade without blocking the sight. In addition, the analysis of weather conditions is not within the scope of this paper; the only focus is on participants’ physical and psychological responses as they experience the environment.
In the experimental procedure, to ensure participants paid attention to the settings, researchers asked participants to verbally describe the scenes they saw in the moment. The verbal description with facial movements in the observation stage inevitably stimulated facial muscle tension and HR and made the readings higher than in the rest state. Although comparing pre-post differences between landscape categories can eliminate concerns on individual’s differences, it needs to be noted when interpreting the results.
Future research
Our results support reflection on several implications and suggestions. First, the natural environment provides better perceived emotional benefits and physical relaxation to humans, and a well-maintained environment can positively influence human responses. Therefore, future research could explore the relationships between the wilderness or participants’ perceptions of nature and the health benefits of the natural environment to establish integrative evidence about the forms of natural landscapes.
This study suggests the use of technology to detect people’s physical responses to be an effective measurement for examining on-site experiences in agritourism farms and nature in general. Whereas the instrument used in this study requires measurements be taken in a static condition, other wearable devices that detect real-time responses can help to collect data during activities. For example, the HealthCloud app, funded by the Council of Agriculture of Taiwan, is a system for monitoring psychological feelings and physical reactions in real time with current environment-related information (e.g., environmental decibels, temperature, humidity) through Apple Watches and smart phones. The collected data can be synchronized to the system in the cloud to store and provide future feedback to traveling users. New tools open opportunities to describe situations and experiences in diverse activity conditions that future research may reveal.
Conclusion
The value of this research lies in its on-site data collection experiment on subjects’ physical and psychological responses to rural landscapes compared with the built environment. Especially the rural landscape along with water features could provide another level of restorative benefits to impress people from urban. The related concepts in environmental psychology without discussing recreation and tourism management, this study ascertains which rural sites could provide health benefits for humans. In conclusion, natural environments in rural areas could release forehead muscle tension. Participants’ psychological responses (e.g., perceived restorativeness, landscape preference, positive pleasure, and arousal) in the natural environment are all better than in the built environment. In addition, using the ecological index to calculate the land cover types gives us precise and objective values on ecosystem service among landscapes. The percentage of land cover types provides insight of the differences in health benefits within different ecological levels of green spaces. Not only could this further improve the possibility of retaining and shaping green space, but also help horticulturists and landscape designers, or landscape architects to rethink the benefits to health. The natural environment offers more fascinating elements (e.g., water features, trees, grass, natural sounds, pleasant views) to explore and relax the mind. Experiencing visual connection stimuli in nature to evaluate preferences, other auditory, olfactory, and sensory perceptions therein may influence health benefits.
Although on-site data collection could be affected by environmental factors, such as microclimate, sound, and other tourists, participants’ experiences were related more directly with environments in on-site experiments than in laboratory experiments. The field experiments reported in this paper have demonstrated significant differences in physical and psychological responses. To reflect the authentic situations and the real-time physical health responses during nature experiences, more experiments measuring these responses with wearable and portable instruments in the field are necessary. In sum, the results present value for academia and practical applications and support the use of on-site data collection to directly gain real-time reactions. When more empirical studies are carried out, more benefits of experiencing natural environments may be uncovered and promoted. Moreover, we may bridge the gap between research and practice, which is transferable to landscape planning, recreation planning, and tourism management, to tailor human experiences with rural areas.
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