Assessing biodiversity's impact on stress and affect from urban to conservation areas: A virtual reality study

Biodiversity is the essential foundation of ecosystem stability and significantly influences human health. However, the specific impacts of broadly varied biodiversity levels across diverse greenspaces on mental well-being remain unclear. In this randomized controlled trial, immersive virtual reality (VR) auditory-visual simulations, emulating real biodiversity scenarios, were employed to investigate the effect of diverse biodiversity levels on stress and affect. After an induced stress phase, participants (N = 90) were randomly assigned to a ten-minute immersion in one of three settings: urban park, peri-urban park, or nature conservation area. Physiological responses were measured via skin conductance level (SCL) and significant skin conductance responses (nSCR), while psychological responses were evaluated using Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS). Additionally, the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS) was employed to evaluate restoration potential. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that immersion in the peri-urban park and nature conservation area was associated with a significantly faster and more substantial decrease in SCL compared to the urban park. nSCR in the nature conservation area remained significantly lower than in the urban park. While immersion in all three natural environments significantly diminished negative affect, the nature conservation scenario was associated with a substantial decline in positive affect and received the lowest rating on the subjective restorativeness. A psychological benefit threshold related to biodiversity was observed, in contrast to the absence of a corresponding physiological threshold. This disparity suggests that an innate genetic affinity for high biodiversity may persists, unaffected by acquired experiences. Our study underscores the stress recovery benefits of high-value ecological environments, thereby fostering an avenue for further investigations into human-ecological health interconnections.