Aquatic Environments and Psychological Well-Being

Research suggests that people generally react more positively to natural than manmade/ built environments. Natural environments appear to aid both cognitive and emotional restoration and measures of revealed and stated preferences suggest people are aware of this. These comparisons have, however, been subject to a systematic, though no doubt unintentional, bias. Whereas water or aquatic features (rivers, coast, lakes) are frequently present in research stimuli representing the natural environment they are rarely, if at all, present in built environment stimuli. This appears to be an oversight for two reasons. First, many towns are located, for good historical reasons, near lakes, rivers and the coast and thus naturally occurring aquatic features are actually commonplace in many urban environments. Second, theorists have long suggested that water may be particularly important for restoration though very little research has explored this possibility directly. The current research addressed these issues by systematically constructing a set of 120 photographs of both natural and built environments. Half the images in each environment contained Aquatic elements. The proportions of Aquatic, Green (trees/ grass) and Built (buildings/roads), elements in the scene were controlled as was the content in terms of animals, people etc. These images were then rated in terms of preference and affective reactions (Study 1) and perceived restorativeness and willingness to pay for a hotel room with the particular view (Study 2). In line with previous conclusions, adding purely Green elements to Built environments led to significant improvements in all measures. Moreover a simple dose-response relationship emerged; as the proportion of Green space increased, responses became more positive. Importantly for present concerns however, two further patterns emerged. Both natural and built scenes containing water were rated significantly more positively than those without water on all four measures. Consequently our data found no significant differences between Built scenes containing water and purely natural Green spaces with no Built or Aquatic elements. That is, people’s preferences, affective reactions, perceived restorativeness and willingness to pay for hotel rooms with views of Built environments containing water were just as high as totally Green space environments. Nevertheless, fully Aquatic scenes were rated less positively than scenes containing approximately 2/3rds water and 1/3rd Green space. Water by itself is not as attractive as the interface between land and water in natural settings. Since the aim of the current research was to investigate whether water might have particular psychological benefits we are unable to answer the more theoretical question of why this should be. Although our findings appear consistent with evolutionary perspectives which argue that the presence of water is crucial for survival it is unclear why views of sea-water should be equally preferred. Drawing on Attention Restoration Theory we speculate that aquatic environments may be particularly good for human well-being because they have the potential to restore two separate aspects of working memory in a way that other environments may not. We are currently conducting research to test this possibility directly.