Can Residential Greenspace Exposure Improve Pain Experience? A Comparison between Physical Visit and Image Viewing

Abstract

Reducing the burden of pain via greenspace exposure is a rising research topic. However, insufficient evidence has been found in relation to the environmental effect itself. Residential greenspace, as a convenient but limited natural environment for urban dwellers, has benefits and services yet to be discovered. Therefore, the current study recruited 24 young adults to evaluate the effects of physical visit to, or image viewing of, residential greenspace on pain perception and related psychophysiological outcomes, via simulated pain. Pain threshold and tolerance were recorded via the level of pain stimuli, and pain intensity was evaluated using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS). The state scale of the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S) and two adjective pairs were employed to measure the state anxiety and subjective stress, respectively. Meanwhile, heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and blood pressure (BP) were measured to investigate physiological responses. Besides, Scenic Beauty Estimation (SBE) was also employed to assess participants’ preference regarding the experimental environments. The results revealed that visiting the greenspace significantly increased the pain threshold and tolerance, while no significant effect was observed for image viewing. On the other hand, no significant difference was observed in pain-related psychophysiological indices between the experimental settings, but significantly negative associations were found between the scores of SBE and subjective stress and state anxiety. In conclusion, the current study brings experimental evidence of improving pain experience via residential greenspace exposure, while the related psychophysiological benefits require further investigation.

Access to Nature via Virtual Reality: A Mini-Review

“…Specifically, a study reported the positive effect of virtual nature on cognitive performance ( Mostajeran et al, 2021 ), which could be related to its restorativeness ( Shin, 2011 ). Tanja-Dijkstra et al (2018) reported that virtual nature reduced both experienced and recollected pain during simulated pain, which is broadly in line with the recent findings on pain relief and actual nature exposure ( Stanhope et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2021a ). Drawing from previous studies, pain relief could result from both the distraction of VR itself and the audiovisual stimuli of nature ( Kline, 2009 ; Sil et al, 2014 ; Guo et al, 2015 ).…”

Green space and loneliness: a systematic review with theoretical and methodological guidance for future research

“…There are many other examples emerging for the harm reduction domain pathway that have potential synergies with other pathways. For example, it is plausible that restorative processes at personal, relational and collective scales combine with lower levels of neighbourhood violence and increased social connection to facilitate reductions in pain, [166][167][168] cigarette smoking, 169 opioid dependence, 170 substance misuse in adolescents, 171 and risks of self-harm and suicidal ideation. [172][173][174][175] Each of these emerging harm reduction pathways warrant further investigation, potentially with moderated mediation models and other methods that may be suitable to distinguish between pathways operating in serial or parallel.…”

Using Heart Rate Variability Methods for Health-Related Outcomes in Outdoor Contexts: A Scoping Review of Empirical Studies

“…There were seven different types of outdoor intervention; however, over half of the studies were one-day forest therapy interventions [14,16,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. Other studies included mountaineering expeditions [41][42][43][44], forest therapy camps [45][46][47][48], green exercise [49][50][51][52], blue exercise [53], horseback riding [54], and skydiving [55]. Over half of the control groups had a similar exposure type as the intervention but in an urban context.…”

“…Almost every study used other physiological or psychological measures in their study, however five studies did not report the use of any other measures [29,32,45,46,57]. The three physiological measures that were most recorded included blood pressure (Bp) [28,31,[34][35][36]38,[40][41][42]49,50,52,53,58], heart rate (Hr) [28,30,38,39,42,43,[47][48][49][50]55,56,59,60], and salivary cortisol [33,37,[39][40][41][42]44,47,49,51,54,58]. Other less common physiological measures assessed were pulse rate (PR) [31,36,41,53,…”

“…Self-reported construct measures varied greatly; however, the most reported measure was the Profile of Mood States (POMS), with thirteen studies using this scale [31,34,35,[40][41][42][43][44]49,54,61]. Seven studies used the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) [30,31,34,43,44,50,54], and the following self-reported scales were used in two studies each: Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) [33,47], Borgs Scale of Perceived Exertion [28,39], Digit Span Memory Test [42,47], Lake Louise Scoring System (LLSS) [57,60], Modified Semantic Differential (SD) Method [34,58], Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) [28,49], and Total Mood Disturbance (TMD) [39,53]. There were ten other self-report measures used in only one study each, and eight studies contained an unspecified scale or question-item survey [34][35][36][37][38][39]42,61].…”