Abstract
The introduction of green plants in indoor spaces has raised a great amount of interest motivated by plants’ supposed capacity to improve the quality of indoor built environments. Subsequent studies have covered a broad range of topics, testing plants in indoor environments for their climate-mitigating effects, acoustic benefits, potential energy savings and the enhancement of the indoor microbial communities. Despite the diversity of focus in these studies, no major breakthroughs have been made involving the use of plants in indoor environments after nearly thirty years of research. To identify major inconsistencies and gaps in the research, this review, of an explorative nature, presents an analysis of plant-related parameters reported in 31 cases of experimental research involving the use of plants in indoor environments. The papers were identified by searching the online databases Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Scopus and MDPI and were selected based on their relevance to the topic and diversity of focus. Two classifications in table form provide an overview of the 38 plant-related parameters used in the reviewed research. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the tables highlight a strongly anthropocentric frame of reference across the majority of the studies, which prioritize human and experimental convenience above plant physiology, and display an overall scarcity and inconsistency in the plant-related parameters reported.
Highlights
The introduction of green plants in indoor spaces has raised a great amount of interest motivated by the positive physiological and psychological benefits for humans [1]
The outcome of the analysis of the plant parameters used in the selected papers is presented in the form of two tables (Table 2 and Table S1)
Instead of focusing on the main aim of the experimental research reviewed—assessing how plants can enhance the environmental quality of the indoor environment—this study has attempted to assess the relevance that plants are really given within the studies
Summary
The introduction of green plants in indoor spaces has raised a great amount of interest motivated by the positive physiological and psychological benefits for humans [1]. The psychological and physiological benefits of human–nature contact include a great number of therapeutic and restorative effects [2] ranging from stress reduction to the development of cognitive and social skills [3]. A large majority of previous work has focused on plants’ supposed capacity to improve indoor air quality (IAQ)—whether through the removal of indoor air pollutants [1,6,7,8,9,10,11], CO2 adsorption [12] or ion regulation [13]—reaching no scientific consensus, many studies claim to have found positive correlations. Some studies have been very critical, pointing out both low removal rates [14] and methodological inconsistencies [8,14]
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