The perceived restorativeness of gardens

Natural environments have been found more restorative than built environments but studies have also highlighted mixed built and natural environments. The aims were to examine the perceived restorativeness of gardens, and evaluate the performance of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale, PRS, when applied to two examples from the same mixed built natural scene type rather than to a contrast between built and natural. The results show that the gardens are perceived restorative and the PRS also proved itself capable of discriminating between the two gardens. This points to the PRS being a useful tool and emphasizes the shortcomings of broad scene type definitions. The results show that one scene type can include environments that are significantly different in perceived restorativeness. This underlines the need to collect data on a greater number of both different scene types and examples within every type, as well as to have more controlled definitions of content and scene types to understand the relationship between the physical expression of a place and its potential of being restorative. The results show that the PRS is sensitive to place characteristics at subscale level, showing a high Being away score for both gardens and a Scope score that differed substantially. The results show a high correlation between restorativeness and preference

Tracking Restorative Components: Patterns in Eye Movements as a Consequence of a Restorative Rating Task

Eye tracking was used to investigate the task of assessing how likely it is that one would be able to rest and recover in small urban spaces and how it affects the view pattern. We assess which environmental components, for example, flowers and trees, participants look at when evaluating restoration likelihood. Further, we compare number of fixations in restorative and non-restorative park photos. Photos were selected based on ratings of low and high likelihood of restoration. Participants were asked to imagine themselves in need of restoration. Photos were presented for 10seconds each. In contrast to studies adapting a free viewing approach, the present study shows that image properties such as contrast and colour did not attract attention; instead participants looked at components that were of importance for assessing restoration likelihood. The components participants looked at the most were trees, followed by benches and bushes. This presents new information on people's view patterns in relation to the task of rating restoration likelihood. In addition, relations between the park components at which participants looked the most and the ratings on restoration likelihood were explored. As expected, we found a positive correlation between grass and restoration likelihood. The relations were negative for all other variables, although not significant. The negative relations were rather unexpected, and possible explanations for them are discussed. Finally, we analysed the association between number of fixations and restoration likelihood ratings, and no correlation was found