Humanization of nature: Testing the influences of urban park characteristics and psychological factors on collegers’ perceived restoration

Abstract

Previous studies have mainly focused on the independent role of landscape characteristics or preference on psychological restoration respectively. However, few studies have explored the complex relationships between restorative effects, landscape characteristics, preference and place bonding factors, particularly in urban parks. The development of new data environment and technique methods enables such a synthesis of innovative approach to reveal the influences of urban park characteristics and various psychological factors on collegers’ perceived restoration. A typical urban park in Wuhan, China, was selected for pilot study, in which 1560 crowdsourced images were collected using the Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) tool. With the help of Deep Learning techniques, landscape characteristics were combined with perceptual factors for the Partial Least Squares (PLS) based statistical analysis. It was found that some landscape properties, such as vegetation and water, presented indirect impacts in activating restoration via psychological mediators. The mediating effect of sense of place and the moderating effects of landscape characteristics on the preference-restoration nexus were revealed. These findings shed new light on the complex process in environmental restoration in which psychological and physical factors are intertwined. At the end, theoretical and managerial implications were proposed for the improvement of landscape planning in restoration studies.