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Exposure to green, blue and historic environments and mental well-being: A comparison between virtual reality head-mounted display and flat screen exposure

Reece, Rebecca; Bornioli, Anna; Bray, Isabelle; Newbutt, Nigel; Satenstein, David; Alford, Chris

Exposure to green, blue and historic environments and mental well-being: A comparison between virtual reality head-mounted display and flat screen exposure Thumbnail


Authors

Rebecca Reece

Anna Bornioli

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Issy Bray Issy.Bray@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Professor in Public Health (Epidemiology)

Nigel Newbutt Nigel.Newbutt@uwe.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer in Digital Education

David Satenstein



Abstract

Improving the mental health of urban residents is a global public health priority. This study builds on existing work that demonstrates the ability of virtual exposure to restorative environments to improve population mental health. It compares the restorative effects of green, blue and historic environments delivered by both flat screen and immersive virtual reality technology, and triangulates data from psychological, physiological and qualitative sources. Results from the subjective measure analyses showed that exposures to all the experimental videos were associated with self-reported reduced anxiety and improved mood, although the historic environment was associated with a smaller reduction of anxiety (p < 0.01). These results were supported by the qualitative accounts. For two of the electroencephalography (EEG) frequency bands, higher levels of activity were observed for historic environments. In relation to the mode of delivery, the subjective measures did not suggest any effect, while for the EEG analyses there was evidence of a significant effect of technology across three out of four frequency bands. In conclusion, this study adds to the evidence that the benefits of restorative environments can be delivered through virtual exposure and suggests that virtual reality may provide greater levels of immersion than flat screen viewing.

Citation

Reece, R., Bornioli, A., Bray, I., Newbutt, N., Satenstein, D., & Alford, C. (2022). Exposure to green, blue and historic environments and mental well-being: A comparison between virtual reality head-mounted display and flat screen exposure. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(15), e9457. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19159457

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 29, 2022
Online Publication Date Aug 2, 2022
Publication Date Aug 2, 2022
Deposit Date Aug 3, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal International journal of environmental research and public health
Print ISSN 1661-7827
Electronic ISSN 1660-4601
Publisher MDPI
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 19
Issue 15
Pages e9457
DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19159457
Keywords restorative environments; well-being; natural and built environments; historic environ- ments; anxiety; EEG; virtual reality; 360-degree video; immersive technology
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9782532
Publisher URL https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/15/9457

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Exposure to green, blue and historic environments and mental well-being: A comparison between virtual reality head-mounted display and flat screen exposure (2 Mb)
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Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)





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