Optimising digital nature for wellbeing

Abstract

The global burdens of negative psychological states such as stress, anxiety, and burnout represent a growing public health concern. As the incidence of these conditions has risen so too has awareness that natural environments might provide cognitive and affective benefits.

Yet unrelenting urbanisation, unprecedented species extinction, and rampant ecological degradation are fostering a creeping extinction of experience, straining the links between people and planet. In an increasingly technologically mediated world, growing emphasis is being placed on how digital forms of nature could impact health.

Understanding how simulated contact with the natural world might be optimised for positive wellbeing outcomes is vital if ‘virtual nature’ is to be used as a therapeutic tool. This thesis consists of three original studies – conducted with large samples and as part of national broadcast initiatives – that aimed to address this burgeoning need.

We first investigated nuances in the way natural soundscapes are experienced. Through an award-winning collaboration with the BBC Natural History Unit, a novel podcast series and experiment generated responses from 7,596 participants. Results indicated how the composition of nature-based soundscapes can affect their restorative potential, demonstrated the crucial role that memories play in these relationships, and suggested that appraisals of restoration can exert an important mediating effect on pro-environmental behaviour.

Next, a similar level of granularity was applied to landscape aesthetics. An online experiment probed how ephemeral features such as sunrise, sunsets, and storms can impact appraisals of virtual environments. Data from 2,509 people supported the familiar urban-nature dichotomy yet revealed substantial momentary and diurnal heterogeneity in measures of beauty and awe. Changes in these metrics also partially mediated participants’ willingness to pay to visit these locations in the ‘real world’.

Partnering again with the BBC on a multi-platform broadcast initiative called Soundscapes for Wellbeing, our third experiment assessed how the visual and acoustic elements of a digital nature experience, including music, might influence viewer emotions. Analyses from 7,636 respondents suggested that whilst music could enhance high arousal feelings such as excitement, natural sounds were integral to eliciting restoration, calmness, awe, and nostalgia. Again, these data revealed a substantial moderating effect of memories, underlining the importance of lived experiences in determining outcomes.

Taken together, these findings reveal important distinctions in the way natural soundscapes are perceived, demonstrate the potential for both ephemeral features and natural sounds to elicit the complex emotions of awe and nostalgia, and highlight the profound moderating effects of personal memories. Future work might focus on expanding understanding of how awe, nostalgia, and memories could represent a hitherto under-recognised depth to the therapeutic potential of encounters with nature in both virtual and real settings.