Pretest-posttest field studies on psychological restoration: a descriptive review and reflections for the future

Almost four decades ago, Attention Restoration Theory and Stress Recovery Theory postulated that nature could help people to recover from the attentional fatigue and the emotional negative outcomes coming from their daily performance. Since then, these theories have inspired a great amount of research. In this review, 19 restoration pretest-posttest field studies were selected. A systematic analysis of the papers was conducted using two rating tools to assess the quality of the studies and to detect their main strengths and weaknesses. The results allowed us to synthesise the results of this sample of studies, to reflect about the nature of the research conducted until today and to point to some issues and challenges that might be addressed in future studies.