Tomasso Linda Powers, Białowolski Piotr, Spengler John D
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Department of Economics, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland.
J Glob Health. 2025 May 16;15:04146. doi: 10.7189/jogh.15.04146.
Societal trends indicate a decreasing frequency of visits to natural settings and an increasing withdrawal from such environments. Separation from natural environments may lead individuals to miss out on the health benefits associated with direct exposure to nature, including stress reduction and positive mood enhancement. Given these trends, surrogate exposures to live nature exposure might comparably reduce stress and are worth exploring. This experimental study contrasts stress reduction from viewing landscape paintings vs. live nature in situ.
We used sensor-monitored skin conductance and survey instruments on 37 older adults who are regular museum visitors to measure individual stress recovery and improvements in mood indicators for each nature viewing treatment, outdoor park and indoor landscape paintings, conducted during a museum-based educational programme in May 2022 in the Northeastern USA.
Difference-in-difference analyses on survey data identified stress reduction of comparable statistical magnitude following both viewing types. However, significantly lower average levels of physiological arousal as measured by skin conductance were observed among park viewers (α = 0.126 for park viewing vs. α = 1.172 for gallery viewing). Regression analysis comparing slopes and rates of change in stress reduction during the calming events revealed a faster rate of stress reduction during the gallery viewing (β = -0.217 for the gallery vs. β = -0.066 for the park).
Findings from this research could be relevant for populations without live nature access or disinclined to go outdoors by offering alternatives to first-person nature contact that reduce stress and enhance positive affect as observed following nature viewing.
社会趋势表明，人们前往自然环境的频率在下降，对这类环境的疏离感在增强。与自然环境相隔绝可能会导致人们错过与直接接触自然相关的健康益处，包括减轻压力和提升积极情绪。鉴于这些趋势，对自然的替代性接触可能会同样减轻压力，值得探索。本实验研究对比了观看风景画与实地观看自然景观在减轻压力方面的效果。
我们对37位经常参观博物馆的老年人使用了传感器监测的皮肤电传导和调查问卷工具，以测量在2022年5月于美国东北部开展的一项基于博物馆的教育项目中，针对每种自然观看方式（户外公园和室内风景画），个人压力恢复情况以及情绪指标的改善情况。
对调查数据进行的双重差分分析表明，两种观看方式后压力减轻的统计幅度相当。然而，通过皮肤电传导测量发现，公园参观者的生理唤醒平均水平显著更低（公园观看时α = 0.126，画廊观看时α = 1.172）。比较平静期压力减轻的斜率和变化率的回归分析显示，画廊观看期间压力减轻的速度更快（画廊观看时β = -0.217，公园观看时β = -0.066）。
本研究结果可能与那些无法接触自然或不愿外出的人群相关，因为研究提供了替代第一人称自然接触的方式，这些方式能像观看自然景观后那样减轻压力并增强积极情绪。
