Sixty young adults were randomly assigned to a fifty-minute walk in either a natural or an urban environment in and around Stanford, California. Before and after their walk, participants completed a series of assessments of affective (emotional) and cognitive functioning.
This study was based on understandings relating to both stress reduction theory (SRT) and attention restoration theory (ART). SRT provides an explanation for the impact of nature experience on affect, suggesting that nature reduces stress. ART, on the other hand, addresses the impact of nature experience on cognition, suggesting that nature can replenish or restore one's capacity for directed attention. Previous studies support both SRT and ART.
The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend the prior research by including additional assessments of both affect and cognition. The additional assessments for affect assessed changes in anxiety, rumination, and negative affect. For cognitive impact, additional assessments included several different measures of working memory. This study also included an assessment of self-reported feelings of connectedness to nature, which allowed the researchers to determine that the groups did not differ with respect to connection to nature before the intervention. An analysis of other variables indicated that there were no significant differences between groups on baseline assessment. This absence of differences across all baseline measures suggests that the randomization was successful and that any post-walk changes could be attributed to differences in the walk experience.
Findings indicated that participants had greater affective benefits from a nature walk than an urban walk. These benefits included greater decreases in anxiety, rumination, and negative affect. Participants in the nature walk also maintained positive affect, while there was a drop in positive affect for participants in the urban walk. Compared to the urban experience, the nature walk also resulted in cognitive benefits as manifested in increased working memory performance, however, the cognitive benefits of the nature walk were not as clear as the affective benefits.
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