ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Impact of Virtual Environments

on Restorativeness and Affect

Nicola S. Schutte, Navjot Bhullar, Emma J. Stilinović, control condition. Exposure to nature can also benefit clinical pop-
and Katheryn Richardson ulations. For example, Berman et al. (2012) compared changes in
positive mood in individuals diagnosed with major depressive dis-
Psychology, University of New England, Armidale, Australia. order randomly assigned to walk for an hour in either a nature setting
or an urban setting. Participants who walked in the nature setting
experienced significantly more positive mood than participants who
Abstract walked in the urban setting. Evolution may have shaped humans to
The present study examined the impact of virtual reality experience benefit physically and psychologically from exposure to nature
of an urban versus a natural environment on affect and restora- (Kahn, 2011).
tiveness. Participants were randomly assigned to experience a nat-
ural environment through 360-degree interactive virtual reality or an Affect
urban environment through 360-degree interactive virtual reality. In a meta-analysis of 32 studies comparing the effect of exposure
Virtual reality experience of a natural environment compared to to natural environments to urban or built environments, McMahan
virtual reality experience of an urban environment resulted in higher and Estes (2015) found that across studies exposure to natural en-
levels of positive affect and a greater perception of restorativeness. vironments compared to built environments was associated with a
Restorativeness was a mediating path between virtual reality expe- moderate association with higher positive affect, with a median effect
rience of a natural or urban environment and positive affect. Trait size of r of .21, and smaller but consistent association with less
connectedness to nature showed a trend toward interacting with negative affect, with an r of -.12. Studies focusing on actual physical
experience of a natural or urban environment’s impact on positive exposure to natural environments showed an r of .37 for positive
affect. Virtual reality technology may have the potential to enhance affect. Exposure to simulated natural environments, generally con-
well-being. Key Words: Affect—Nature—Restorativeness—Urban— sisting of photographs or film, showed an r of .26 for positive affect.
Virtual reality. For other outcomes, such as feeling of connectedness with the
natural world, cognitive functioning, and communication, exposure

E
xposure to nature may have a beneficial effect on psycho- to nature simulated through technologies such as plasma screens or
logical well-being and health (Capaldi et al., 2015; McMahan robotic devices tends to lead to more benefits than no nature. Actual
& Estes, 2015; Nieuwenhuijsen et al., 2014). For example, in nature tends to lead to even more pronounced benefits for such
a study of over 9000 adults, Triguero-Mas et al. (2015) found outcomes (Kahn et al., 2008, 2009).
that those who had access to green spaces reported better mental
health and better general physical health. In a nature-based well- Restorativeness
being intervention, Passmore and Holder (2016) found that non- Exposure to nature may also have beneficial effects on restora-
clinical participants randomly assigned to attend to nature in their tiveness (Berto, 2014; Hartig et al., 1991, 2014; Takayama et al.,
everyday surroundings for 2 weeks experienced significantly more 2014). As defined by Hartig, Korpela, Evans, and Gärling (1997),
positive affect after the intervention in comparison to participants restorativeness involves thoughts and perceptions that result in in-
assigned to attend to human-built surroundings. They also experi- dividuals’ sense of being away from the ordinary routines of life,
enced more positive affect than participants in a business-as-usual connectedness to alternative surroundings or contexts, fascination or

DOI: 10.1089/eco.2016.0042 ª MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC.  VOL. 0 NO. 0  XXX 2017 ECOPSYCHOLOGY 1
SCHUTTE ET AL.

attention to these surroundings or contexts, and compatibility with study set out to provide preliminary information regarding the
these surroundings or contexts, which includes a match between processes through which virtual reality experience of nature may
individuals’ goals or inclinations and the surroundings. Experimental influence affect.
research suggests that natural environments impact restorativeness
(Berto, 2014). For example, depressed patients provided with nature Aim of the present research
exposure showed increased restorativeness as well as a decrease in The present research investigated the impact of interactive virtual
depression (Korpela et al., 2016). reality simulated nature. The hypotheses were that:
There is some evidence that higher levels of restorativeness are
(1) Virtual reality experience of a natural environment compared
associated with more positive affect and less negative affect (Hartig
to virtual reality experience of an urban environment will
et al., 1997, 2003; Takayama et al., 2014). Thus, as well being is an
result in greater restorativeness.
important outcome in response to being exposed to nature, restora-
(2) Virtual reality experience of a natural environment compared
tiveness might be a link in the connection between nature and affect.
to virtual reality experience of an urban environment will
result in more positive affect and less negative affect.
Connectedness to nature
(3) Restorativeness will be a mediating path between the virtual
Mayer and Frantz (2004) describe connectedness to nature as an
reality experience and affect. Virtual reality experience will
individual’s affective and experiential connection to natural envi-
influence restorativeness, and restorativeness in turn will in-
ronments. Connectedness to nature is a stable trait-like characteristic
fluence affect.
and can also at times be a transitory state prompted by being in
(4) Trait connectedness with nature will interact with the effect of
nature (Mayer et al., 2009). Trait connectedness to nature is a rela-
virtual reality experience of a natural environment versus
tively lasting individual difference characteristic that can influence
virtual reality experience of an urban environment. Those
motivation and emotion. The results of a meta-analysis of studies
with greater connectedness to nature will experience less
examining the relationship between connectedness to nature and
positive affect, more negative affect, and less restorativeness
positive affect indicate that individuals with higher levels of trait
in the urban compared to the natural virtual reality condition
connectedness to nature experience significantly more positive affect
than those with less connectedness to nature.
(Capaldi et al., 2014). Therefore, it seems that the degree to which
individuals feel connected to nature may interact with their reactions
to the environments they encounter (Capaldi et al., 2015). Method
Participants and procedure
Virtual reality After approval by the institutional review committee, 26 univer-
Virtual reality devices are becoming increasingly accessible sity students from Australia provided consent and participated in this
(McAninch, 2016) and have promising psychological applications experimental study. The 16 women and 10 men had a mean age of
(Riva, 2005). For example, results from several studies indicate that 34.46 years (SD = 12.60). Participants completed premeasures of state
exposure through virtual reality to anxiety-inducing situations can positive and negative mood as well as a measure of trait connect-
be useful in the treatment of anxiety disorders (Anderson et al., 2013; edness to nature. Participants were then randomly assigned to a
Bissonette et al., 2015; Price et al., 2011). Non-interactive virtual virtual reality natural environment condition or a virtual reality
reality consisting of a composite of full-screen projection of posi- urban environment condition. After the virtual reality experience,
tive images, pleasant music, and therapist instruction significantly participants again completed state measures of positive and negative
increased positive affect in individuals experiencing chronic pain mood as well as a measure of restorativeness of their virtual reality
(Herrero et al., 2014). Annerstedt et al. (2013) found that exposure experience.
to virtual nature consisting of visual images featuring a forest and
stream along with sounds of water and birdsong facilitated recovery Material
from stress. New interactive virtual reality technology may have the A Samsung 360-degree panoramic camera was used to create both
potential to bring benefits of nature to individuals who do not have the natural and urban virtual reality material. The natural material
direct access to nature. Pathways through which virtual reality presented participants with a virtual environment of an Australian
might result in such benefits remain to be explored. The present nature landscape, comprising eucalyptus trees, a meadow, and a

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stream. Sound included birdsong and the sound of water running The scale has evidence of reliability and validity (Hartig et al.,
over rocks in the stream. The urban material presented participants 1997). Participants were asked to complete the scale after their virtual
with a virtual environment of a small Australian town, comprising reality experience in relation to their virtual environment experience.
buildings lining streets, some road traffic, a pedestrian mall, and the In the present study, internal consistency as assessed by Cronbach’s
sound of traffic and people talking on the pedestrian mall. Both alpha was .97.
virtual reality experiences were 6 min long and had an equal number
of scene transitions. Connectedness to nature. The Connectedness to Nature Scale (Mayer
Participants experienced natural or urban virtual reality through a & Frantz, 2004) assessed participants’ trait sense of oneness with the
Samsung 360 virtual reality headset that provided panoramic 360 natural world. Example items include ‘‘I think of the natural world as
head-tracking virtual reality with corresponding directed sound. All a community to which I belong’’ and ‘‘Like a tree can be part of
participants sat on swivel chairs that enabled them to rotate as they a forest, I feel embedded within the broader natural world.’’
wished to complement the head movement sensitivity of the virtual Respondents rate how well each descriptor applies to them in general on
reality equipment to facilitate the full 360 immersion in the virtual a scale on which 1 indicates strongly disagree and 5 indicates strongly
environments. agree. High scores indicate more connectedness to nature. Total scale
scores were divided by the number of items on the scale to allow in-
Measures terpretability of means using the Likert scale response options.
Positive and negative affect. The state version of the Positive and The scale has prior evidence of reliability and validity (Mayer &
Negative Affect Scales (PANAS; Watson et al., 1988) assessed posi- Frantz, 2004). In the present study, internal consistency as assessed
tive and negative mood before and after the virtual reality experi- by Cronbach’s alpha was .89.
ence. The PANAS consist of emotion descriptors such as ‘‘alert’’ and
‘‘inspired’’ for the Positive Affect Scale and ‘‘irritable’’ and ‘‘nervous’’ Overview of statistical analyses
for the Negative Affect Scale. Respondents rate how well each de- An analysis of variance tested the hypothesis that virtual reality
scriptor applies to them at the time on a scale on which 1 indicates experience of a natural environment compared to virtual reality
very slightly or not at all and 5 indicates extremely. High scores on the experience of an urban environment results in greater restorative-
Positive Affect Scale indicate greater positive affect, and high scores ness. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) as recommended by
on the Negative Affect Scale indicate greater negative affect. Total Tabachnick and Fidell (2007) tested the hypothesis that virtual reality
scale scores were divided by the number of items on the respective experience of a natural environment compared to virtual reality
scales to allow interpretability of means using the Likert scale re- experience of an urban environment results in more positive affect
sponse options. and less negative affect through examining differential changes
The scales have previously shown good internal consistency among participants in the nature and urban virtual reality conditions
and evidence of construct validity, including expected associa- in positive and negative affect, respectively, from pre– to post–
tions with other measures of mood (Watson et al., 1988). In the virtual reality experience. A mixed repeated-measures and between-
present study, internal consistency as assessed by Cronbach’s al- condition analysis then examined the changes in positive affect
pha was .92 for the Positive Affect Scale at pretest and .96 at between conditions further.
posttest. Cronbach’s alpha was .80 for the Negative Affect Scale at Mediation analysis using Model 4 in PROCESS (Hayes, 2013)
pretest and .79 at posttest. tested the hypothesis that restorativeness is a mediating path between
virtual reality experience and affect by examining whether restora-
Restorativeness. The Perceived Restorativeness Scale (Hartig et al., tiveness prompted by the virtual reality experience connected the
1997) measures respondents’ perception of restorativeness of an experience to positive affect. Mediation analysis tests whether effect
environment. Example items include ‘‘Being here is an escape ex- of the independent variable is transmitted to the dependent variable
perience’’ and ‘‘This place has fascinating qualities.’’ Respondents rate through the mediator variable.
items on a scale on which 1 indicates not at all and 7 indicates Moderation analysis using Model 1 in PROCESS (Hayes, 2013)
completely. High scores indicate greater restorativeness. Total scale tested the hypothesis that connectedness with nature interacts with
scores were divided by the number of items on the scale to allow the impact of virtual reality experience of a natural environment
interpretability of means using the Likert scale response options. versus virtual reality experience of an urban environment by

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examining whether trait connectedness with nature interacted with iable and with pretest scores of positive affect as the covariate,
urban or natural virtual reality experience in impacting positive af- F(1,23) = 6.27, p = .02, partial eta squared = .21. This also represents a
fect. Moderation analysis tests whether the independent variable large effect size (Cohen, 1992). The ANCOVA results did not show
interacts with another variable, the moderator variable, in impacting a significant effect of condition on change in negative affect,
the dependent variable. F(1,23) = .08, p = .44, partial eta squared = .004.
A mixed repeated-measures and between-condition analysis ex-
Results amined the changes in positive affect between conditions further. The
Descriptive statistics interaction between condition and change in positive affect from pre
Means and standard deviations for the main variables are shown in to post was significant, F(1,24) = 6.12, p = .02, partial eta squared =
Table 1. Bivariate correlations between age and the main variables .21. The significant difference between conditions was mainly due to
showed connectedness with nature was significantly associated with a decrease in positive affect among participants in the urban virtual
age, r(25) = .50, p = .009, with older participants reporting more reality condition, t(13) = 3.68, p = .003, and a slight nonsignificant
connectedness to nature. No other variables were associated with age. increase in positive affect among participants in the nature virtual
There were no significant differences between men and women on reality condition, t(13) = .27, p = 79.
any of the variables.
Mediation. Mediation analysis examined whether restorativeness
Main results prompted by the virtual reality condition connected virtual reality
Restorativeness. An analysis of variance indicated that participants in conditions to positive affect. In this analysis, condition was the
the virtual reality natural condition reported significantly more re- independent variable, restorativeness was the mediating variable,
storativeness after their experience than participants in the urban en- pre–virtual reality experience positive affect was the covariate, and
vironment condition, F(1,25) = 19.39, p = .0001, partial eta squared = .45. post–virtual reality experience positive affect was the dependent
This partial eta squared represents a large effect size (Cohen, 1992). variable. The indirect effect of restorativeness was -11.90 (SE = 2.32),
CI 95% [-17.37, -6.25], and a Sobel test of z = -3.74, p = .001, indi-
Affect. An ANCOVA as recommended by Tabachnick and Fidell cating significant mediation. Thus, level of restorativeness experi-
(2007) examined differential changes among participants in the enced by participants in reaction to their virtual reality condition was
natural and urban virtual reality conditions in positive and negative a path to change in positive affect.
affect, respectively, from pre– to post–virtual reality experience.
Condition had a significant effect on change in positive affect, with Moderation. Moderation analysis examined whether trait connect-
post–virtual reality experience positive affect as the dependent var- edness with nature interacted with urban or natural virtual reality

Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations for Nature and Urban Virtual Reality Conditions
CONDITIONS
NATURE URBAN
PRE POST PRE POST
VARIABLES MEAN SD MEAN SD MEAN SD MEAN SD
Positive Affect 3.41 .95 3.49 1.11 3.44 .68 2.69 .89

Negative Affect 1.23 .37 1.12 .25 1.13 .16 1.17 .30

Restorativeness (Post only) 5.67 1.23 3.79 .92

Connectedness to Nature (Pre only) 3.59 .84 3.39 .27

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 VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

and positive affect. Trait connectedness to nature showed a trend

toward interacting with experience of a natural or urban environ-
ment’s impact on positive affect.
The impact of virtual reality experience of a natural versus an
urban environment on positive affect is consistent with the meta-
analytic findings of McMahan and Estes (2015) relating to the impact
of both actual and film- or photograph-simulated natural environ-
ments on positive affect. Comparison of the effect sizes reported by
McMahan and Estes (2015) with the effect size for the impact of
virtual reality experience of a natural environment versus an urban
environment indicates that the effect size found in the present study
is larger than the effect size across studies found by McMahan and
Estes (2015) for the impact of environments simulated by film or
photographs and somewhat larger than the effect size across studies
found by McMahan and Estes (2015) for the impact of actual envi-
Fig. 1. Moderating effect of connectedness to nature on the impact ronments. McMahan and Estes (2015) reported meta-analytic effect
of nature and urban virtual reality conditions on positive affect. sizes, summarizing results across studies as r. The effect sizes re-
ported by McMahan and Estes (2015) were .21 for environments
simulated by film or photographs and .37 for actual environments.
experience in impacting positive affect. In this analysis, condition These effect sizes can be contrasted with the partial eta-squared effect
was the independent variable, connectedness to nature was the size converted to r = .46 for the impact of virtual reality natural versus
moderating variable, pre–virtual reality experience positive affect virtual reality urban environment in the present study. This com-
was the covariate and age another covariate as descriptive analyses parison of effect sizes suggests promise for the impact of virtual
had shown that age was significantly associated with connectedness reality–based presentation of environments.
with nature, and post–virtual reality experience positive affect was In the present study, the difference in impact of the natural versus
the dependent variable. The analysis showed a trend toward connect- urban environment was largely due to the decrease in positive affect
edness with nature interacting with condition in impacting positive among participants who virtually experienced the urban environ-
affect, F(1, 22) = 3.69, p = .07. The standard error for the interaction ment, with only a slight increase in positive affect among partici-
effect for the natural condition was .32, and the standard error for the pants virtually experiencing the natural environment. The present
interaction effect for the urban condition was .99. Figure 1 shows that study was conducted at a university campus with substantial natural
participants in the urban virtual reality condition with higher levels of landscaping somewhat similar to the natural environment featured in
connectedness with nature experienced a trend toward less positive the virtual reality natural condition. Thus, participants may have
affect than those with lower levels of connectedness with nature. already experienced the influence of a natural environment on state
Connectedness with nature did not interact with the virtual reality positive affect before commencing the study. The mean positive af-
experience in impacting negative affect or restorativeness. fect score on the PANAS at pretest was above the median value for
the scale (falling between the descriptive anchors of somewhat and
Discussion quite a bit), indicating that upon entering the study participants al-
The present study extended research on the effects of environments ready had relatively high positive affect. The urban virtual reality
on well-being through use of virtual reality technology. The results condition consisted of a small town with buildings lining streets,
indicated that virtual reality experience of a natural environment some traffic, and a pedestrian mall. An urban virtual reality condition
compared to virtual reality experience of an urban environment led featuring a large city with more traffic and crowding might elicit
to higher levels of positive affect and a greater experience of re- different emotions and perhaps result in even lower positive affect.
storativeness. The virtual reality experience did not have a significant The present study also found that level of restorativeness partici-
impact on negative affect. Restorativeness was a mediating path pants reported in reaction to their virtual experience mediated be-
between virtual reality experience of a natural or urban environment tween condition and change in positive affect from before to after the

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virtual experience. Participants in the virtual nature condition re- cumstances, such as hospitalized patients. For example, in a classic
ported a substantially higher level of restorativeness than partic- study, Ulrich (1984) found that surgery patients who had a window
ipants in the virtual urban condition. This higher level of with a view of nature had a shorter post-operative hospital stay and
restorativeness linked the virtual experience with positive affect. took fewer powerful analgesics than matched patients in similar
Higher levels of the perception of restorativeness may be important rooms with windows of a view of a brick wall. As not all hospital
in their own right as restorativeness is associated with well-being patients can be provided with rooms providing a view of actual na-
and mental health (Hartig et al., 1997, 2003; Korpela et al., 2016; ture, the benefits of virtual reality nature experience in the recovery
Takayama et al., 2014). The mediating effect of restorativeness is also of patients might be explored in future research.
important as it illustrates connections between beneficial outcomes
prompted by experience of nature and provides a platform for pos-
sibly optimizing the benefits of nature exposure. For example, if a
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