Home Greenery: Alleviating Anxiety during Lockdowns with Varied Landscape Preferences

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries applied lockdown rules to flatten their epidemic curves. Meanwhile, many people suffered mental health crises. However, evidence is lacking on the psychologically restorative effects of home greenery for citizens with varying landscape preferences when public green spaces are unavailable. In Xi’an, China, during the December 2021 lockdown period, a questionnaire on residents’ anxiety, houseplants and green view from windows, and landscape preferences was designed by the authors and sampled by snowballing. Houseplants and green view from windows were positively associated with anxiety remission (p < 0.05), and the effects were different among landscape preferences. The houseplants helped to alleviate moderate and severe anxiety among respondents who preferred open green spaces and partly open green spaces. Visual exposure to Urban Green Spaces through windows alleviated mild anxiety in respondents who preferred open green spaces. It also alleviated mild, moderate, and severe anxiety in respondents who preferred partly open green spaces. More visual exposure to Urban Green Spaces via windows alleviated mild, moderate, and severe anxiety in respondents who preferred partly open blue spaces. When cities are at risk of pandemics, or in places where incapacitated people are living, distributing indoor plants to households presents a quick approach to helping mitigate anxiety and increasing green cover in residential areas will improve sustainability.