In this study we investigated the restorative effects of shortterm
visits in different types of urban environments. We
compared a built-up area and two different types of green environment,
a constructed urban park and an extensively managed
woodland, as opposed to most previous studies that compare a
built-up environment to just one natural environment. In our
experiment we combined psychological measures with the physiological
one (salivary cortisol levels). Moreover, we had a large
sample size of the adult (mainly female) working people as participants
who arrived for the experiment after their working day.
Previous experimental studies have had smaller sample sizes and
students (often males) as participants (e.g. Park et al., 2008;
Tsunetsugu et al., 2013). This allowed us to look at the effects of
exposure to nature close to the environment the participants would
have access to, and also close to their real-life situations, giving
them opportunities for stress relief. However, recruiting healthy,
middle-aged adults had some limitations. We contacted the chief
personnel managers of various working places, but we had no
control over who received the invitation letter. In the end our
sample consisted of mainly female participants. We do not know if
the invitation letters were sent to the working places with female
domination in work force, or the women were more active to
participate in this study. The literature suggests that women and
men differ in their perceptions and usage of urban green space (e.g.
Beil & Hanes, 2013; Richardson & Mitchell, 2010). However, we kept
the few male participants in our study for two reasons: First, our
males voluntarily participated in all three sessions and it would
have been unethical to leave them out. Second, we calculated all the
analyses with females only and we found two changes in psychological
(not physiological) results. These differences were the
changes of a significance level in two cases. The significance levels
of the interaction effects between three environmental settings and
three time-points during the experiment of subjective vitality scale
increased from .01 to .05 with females only (the significant difference
between urban park and urban woodland vs. city centre in the
end of the experiment (after walking) vs. after sitting, and after
walking vs. at the beginning of the experiment). The second case
concerns the negative affect scale, where the interaction effect
between the three urban environmental settings and the negative
mood measure at two time-points during the experiment was nonsignificant
(as mentioned in the results section), but there was a
significant difference between urban woodland vs. city centre on
time two (at the end of the experiment) vs. time one