The Application of Wearable Technology to Quantify Health and Wellbeing Co-benefits From Urban Wetlands

Abstract

Improved nature provision in urban environments offers great potential for achieving both biodiversity conservation and public health objectives. Yet there are few experimental studies that address links between specific natural environments and physiological and/or psychological changes that could contribute to the health and wellbeing co-benefits of urban nature. In addition, relative to green space, the salutogenic impact of aquatic environments are understudied. Here, we present a feasibility study examining the use of low-cost wearable technology to quantify the psychophysiological effects of short-term exposure to urban wetlands. The study took place at the WWT London Wetland Centre, which is characterized by its contrasting biodiverse wetland habitat and surrounding urban setting. Thirty-six healthy participants experienced counterbalanced exposures to an indoor space, a wetland, an urban site. We continuously recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) data and real-time physiological stress responses; with additional monitoring of post-exposure self-reported mood states. We found a significant effect of site on mean resting heart rate (HR), with increased HR in the urban setting, although this was only observed in participants with pre-existing high stress. We found no significant differences in other measures of physiological stress responses (heart rate variability and electrodermal activity). The EEG data showed modulation of high beta band activity only in the wetland setting, potentially related to changes in attention. However, the EEG findings were confounded by low quality signals and artifacts caused by movement and environmental interference. Assessments of self-reported mood states demonstrated an increase in positive feelings in the wetland setting. A pronounced decrease in negative feelings in the wetland setting was observed in stressed individuals only. Our results suggest that pre-existing stress levels may be an important modulator of the salutogenic effect of blue-green space. We provide partial support for the hypothesis that exposure to blue-green space promotes stress recovery and for the use of low-cost psychophysiological measurements to quantify the potential stress-reducing effects of blue–green space exposure in urban dwellers. Further technological refinement is required for this approach to become a viable tool to support evidence-based decision-making for public health and green/blue space provision.

Wetlands for Wellbeing: Piloting a Nature-Based Health Intervention for the Management of Anxiety and Depression

“…Different types of natural environment vary in their ability to promote wellbeing (e.g., [6,14,58,59,60]) and so it is important to discern whether, and to what extent, wetlands can also promote good mental health. For the participants in this study, spending time within a wetland environment was associated with reductions in perceived stress, a finding that is comparable to recently published work [21]. We expand this evidence-base by demonstrating wetlands additionally play a role in reducing anxiety and negative affect, while increasing mental wellbeing and positive affect.…”

“…The work that has been done shows that people living adjacent to urban wetlands benefit from increased positive affect and perceive them as having restorative qualities [19], providing opportunities for ‘being away’ and experiencing ‘fascination’ [20]. Additionally, Reeves et al [21] found that wetlands may encourage stress recovery, particularly for individuals who are experiencing high levels of self-reported stress. This might be attributable to wetlands’ high levels of biodiversity, as species richness has been shown to be positively associated with self-reported psychological wellbeing [22,23,24,25].…”

A Qualitative Analysis of UK Wetland Visitor Centres as a Health Resource

“…Restoration may be achieved either by reducing stress [70] or by implementing cognitive restoration [71,72]. Wetlands specifically may encourage stress recovery (from just 10 min exposures), particularly for individuals who experience high levels of self-reported stress [73]. Restoration through blue spaces is derived through high levels of preference, perceived restorativeness and positive affect relative to green spaces [60,[74][75][76].…”

Using Virtual Reality to Evaluate the Impact of Room Acoustics on Cognitive Performance and Well-Being

“…Three psychophysiological measures were acquired for this study: skin conductance level, heart rate, and heart rate variability. Skin conductance level is a tonic (slow changing) galvanic skin response over time (Fontanella et al, 2012) measured in micro-Siemens (μS), and is widely used indicator of measuring physiological stress (Zhang et al, 2017;Birenboim et al, 2019;Reeves et al, 2019;). Heart rate represents heartbeats per minute (bpm; Solhjoo et al, 2019).…”