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Abstract
Nature walks are an effective and popular means to replenish fatigued mental resources. Alas, nature walks are not always accessible due to a lack of time or limited availability. We report on the design and pilot test of a room-scale virtual reality (VR) application that makes use of actual walking and impossible spaces to simulate dynamic restorative walks. We conducted a randomized controlled experiment in VR using a between-subjects design. Thirty-one participants went for an 8-min virtual walk either in a fixed virtual restorative environment (control condition) or in the proposed dynamic virtual restorative environment (treatment condition). The treatment condition with the proposed room-scale approach yielded increased user involvement, higher present moment awareness, increased perceived restorativeness of the experience, better subjective restoration, and an improved positive affect. Behavioral analysis showed that the proposed approach led to a reduced walking speed over the course of the walking exercise. The results suggest that room-scale VR in conjunction with virtual restorative environments and impossible spaces can be used to create sophisticated virtual restorative walks in confined spaces. Future research and development are needed to further establish the effects, to identify moderating and mediating factors and to investigate such VR applications in relevant real-world contexts.
Highlights
Restorative Nature WalksNature walks are a prominent and effective way to take a break from stressful day-to-day routines and find relaxation as well as restoration
To test whether the participants reported higher present moment awareness after the treatment compared to the control (H2), we conducted a one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) on the self-framed item
The ANOVA revealed an effect of the condition, F(1, 29) = 6.270, p = 0.018, η2p = 0.178, with higher subjective restoration in the treatment group (M = 5.53, SD = 1.54) compared to the control group (M = 4.18, SD = 1.48)
Summary
Nature walks are a prominent and effective way to take a break from stressful day-to-day routines and find relaxation as well as restoration. Numerous empirical studies have found that walks in natural settings such as parks or forests can successfully reduce symptoms of stress, improve mood and well-being, and restore mental resources (Pretty et al, 2005b; Marselle et al, 2014; Capaldi et al, 2015; Korpela et al, 2016; Lahart et al, 2019). The effect of nature walks is positively contrasted against walks in urban environments or indoor environments with human-made features and stimuli (Berman et al, 2008; Mayer et al, 2009; Roe and Aspinall, 2011). The Attention Restoration Theory (ART; Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan, 1995) posits that spending time in environments with restorative qualities allows for indirected effortless attention so that the mind
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