Restorative environments promote restoration of various human attributes that are useful life skills, including enhanced attention and stress management. In educational settings, recess offers an optimal opportunity for children to spend time in a restorative environment. School playgrounds in particular may serve as a restorative environment for children, and the benefits of this would be far-reaching as playgrounds are accessible by many children and used often. Spending time in restorative environments has many positive effects on both children and adults, but research on what types of environments children find restorative is scarce. Attention restoration theory posits that a restorative environment must have four specific components: being away (physically or psychologically), fascination (cognitive or physical), compatibility (with purpose), and extent (scope and connectedness). Most research on the topic has found that adults find natural areas more restorative than built environments. There is limited research looking at restorative natural environments and children. Physical features of a playground and play period experiences and activities likely affect how children perceive the playground's restorativeness, but research on these factors is limited. The major purpose of this study was to identify factors children associate with perceived restorativeness of playgrounds.
The factors examined and the multiple components they encompass include: playground naturalness (adult perceived naturalness, vegetation volume, and grass covering percentage), physical characteristics besides nature (playground size, number of play areas, play resources/equipment, and playground percentage), and play period experiences (affect, perceived affordances, level of physical activity, level of social interaction).
In terms of the effect of playground naturalness, children were more likely to perceive a playground as restorative as vegetation volume and grass covering percentage increased, indicating that they find natural areas more restorative than built environments. There was no relationship found between adult perceived naturalness and children perceived restorativeness. No physical characteristics besides nature were significantly associated with perceived restorativeness. Two specific play period experiences affected perceived restorativeness: positive affect and perceived affordances, and these relationships were much stronger than the ones between naturalness and perceived restorativeness. Younger children were more likely to perceive their school's playground as restorative.
This study is generally well-designed, supports some existing research on environment restorativeness, and adds new findings to the evidence base.
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