Abstract
Environments shape health and well-being, yet little research has investigated how different real-world environmental settings influence the well-known determinant of health known as stress. Using a cross-over experimental design; this pilot study investigated the effect of four urban environments on physiological and psychological stress measures. Participants (N = 15) were exposed on separate days to one of the four settings for 20 min. These settings were designated as Very Natural; Mostly Natural; Mostly Built and Very Built. Visitation order to the four settings was individually randomized. Salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase; as well as self-report measures of stress; were collected before and after exposure to each setting. Gender was included as a variable in analysis; and additional data about environmental self-identity, pre-existing stress, and perceived restorativeness of settings were collected as measures of covariance. Differences between environmental settings showed greater benefit from exposure to natural settings relative to built settings; as measured by pre-to-post changes in salivary amylase and self-reported stress; differences were more significant for females than for males. Inclusion of covariates in a regression analysis demonstrated significant predictive value of perceived restorativeness on these stress measures, suggesting some potential level of mediation. These data suggest that exposure to natural environments may warrant further investigation as a health promotion method for reducing stress.
Highlights
The “settings approach” to public health uses a holistic, multi-component model to describe how environments shape health and well-being [1]
Comparison of primary outcome measures revealed no significant correlations between salivary cortisol (sCort) and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) stress biomarkers or between these physiological measures of stress and the main psychometric stress measure
The presence of gender effects in similar studies [44,45,46] led to the decision that all outcome measure data would be analyzed by gender, subsequent to the main analyses for each measure
Summary
The “settings approach” to public health uses a holistic, multi-component model to describe how environments shape health and well-being [1]. This systems-based approach, established by the 1986. The consideration and adoption of a health-promoting approach to urban design is increasingly necessary as cities grow and the global population continues to surpass the 50% urban threshold [6] The importance of these perspectives is reflected in the difference in prevalence of multiple physical and mental health conditions that exist between urban and rural areas [7,8,9]
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