Porter School of the Environmental and Earth Sciences, the Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Department of Geography and Human Environment, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Environ Res. 2020 Aug;187:109687. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.109687. Epub 2020 May 21.
The home environment is regarded as a safe, comfortable environment, however, home can also be a stressful place. Compared to staying in the indoor home environment, the effects of short visits to outdoor urban environments on short-term psychological, physiological and cognitive responses were not studied previously.
To evaluate whether visits to different urban and ethnic environments, in comparison to staying in the home indoor environment, leads to short-term changes in psychological, physiological and cognitive responses and whether these responses are independent of ethnicity.
The participants, 20-35 year-old healthy women (N = 72, 48 Arab and 24 Jewish), started the experiment at their home and visited six different outdoor urban environments in predominantly ethnic Arab or Jewish cities, in Israel. First they visited intra-ethnic city and afterward inter-ethnic city environments. In each city they first visited an urban park and afterward, in a random order, a residential neighborhood and the city center. In each environment (including home) the following measures were used to evaluate psychological, physiological and cognitive effects: mood (measured as positive and negative emotions, cheerfulness, relaxed, natural and discomfort feelings), autonomic nervous system balance (assessed using heart rate variability (HRV)) and working memory (measured by a backwards digit-span task). Several potential mediators were measured: carbon monoxide (CO), heat, noise, social aspects, and the self-perceived restoration scale.
Compared to staying in the indoor home environment, short visits to outdoor urban environments, specifically intra and inter-ethnic parks, were associated with beneficial psychological, physiological, and cognitive responses, and the strongest effects were found for the intra-ethnic park. The results for the other urban environments were different between Jewish and Arab women. The self-perceived restoration, social aspects and reduced CO, heat and noise exposures during the visits did not explain the observed changes between the outdoor environments and home.
Visits to urban parks compared to staying in the home environment had beneficial short-term changes in psychological, physiological, and cognitive responses, regardless of ethnicity. The changes could not be attributed to the investigated mediators. Women should be encouraged to go outdoors and specifically visit parks to improve their psychological and physiological health.
家庭环境被视为安全、舒适的环境，但它也可能是一个充满压力的地方。与待在室内家庭环境相比，此前尚未研究短期访问城市户外环境对短期心理、生理和认知反应的影响。
评估与待在室内家庭环境相比，短期访问不同的城市和族裔环境是否会导致短期心理、生理和认知反应的变化，以及这些反应是否与族裔无关。
20-35 岁健康女性（N=72，48 名阿拉伯裔和 24 名犹太裔）参与了该实验，她们从家中开始，在以色列的以阿拉伯裔为主和以犹太裔为主的城市中访问了六个不同的户外城市环境。首先，她们访问了族内城市环境，然后访问了族际城市环境。在每个城市中，她们首先访问了一个城市公园，然后以随机顺序访问了一个居民区和市中心。在每个环境（包括家庭环境）中，使用以下措施评估心理、生理和认知效应：情绪（通过积极和消极情绪、快乐、放松、自然和不适感觉来衡量）、自主神经系统平衡（通过心率变异性（HRV）评估）和工作记忆（通过倒背数字跨度任务衡量）。测量了几个潜在的中介因素：一氧化碳（CO）、热量、噪音、社会方面和自我感知恢复量表。
与待在室内家庭环境相比，短期访问城市户外环境，特别是族内和族际公园，与有益的心理、生理和认知反应有关，族内公园的影响最强。在犹太女性和阿拉伯女性中，其他城市环境的结果有所不同。在访问期间，自我感知恢复、社会方面以及 CO、热量和噪音暴露的减少并不能解释户外活动与家庭环境之间的观察到的变化。
与待在家庭环境相比，访问城市公园对心理、生理和认知反应有短期的有益变化，而与族裔无关。这些变化不能归因于所调查的中介因素。应该鼓励女性到户外去，特别是去公园，以改善她们的心理和生理健康。
