Visual Exposure to Natural Environments Decreases Delay Discounting of Improved Air Quality

Abstract

Poor air quality contributes to nearly 7 million premature deaths annually and remains a major public health concern. In order to directly address the future of air quality and current emissions, some economists and policy makers have stressed adopting a “zero discount rate” (or lowest possible) to promote clean air quality now and in the future. A low discount rate is also associated with individual health behaviors (e.g., exercise and lower rate of substance abuse). But what influences the psychology of decision-making that is relevant to the discount rate of air quality and public health outcomes, and individual health? The present experiments evaluated differences in such decision-making (i.e., delay-discounting) in the context of improved air quality with visual exposure to natural vs. built environments. Results showed that individuals exposed to natural scenes discounted improved air quality less (i.e., made more future-oriented decisions, Experiment 1), and this may be related to expanded space perception (Experiment 2). These results are the first to suggest that delay discounting of air quality (or any environmental outcome), similar to money, is malleable, and can be influenced by exposure to natural relative to built environments. These findings have implications for influencing long-term, individual health, and environmentally relevant decision-making and improving individual and public health related outcomes such as air quality.

Low-Level Visual Features of Window Views Contribute to Perceived Naturalness and Mental Health Outcomes

“…Even though both were positively associated with a more natural view, they were associated with increased impulsive decision-making. At first glance, this seems to contradict previous studies [19,35] in which (objective and subjective) nature experience was associated with reduced impulsive decision-making, although these studies did not examine window views specifically. However, the results may align with the Attention Restoration Theory (ART; [88,89]), according to which natural environments have inherent characteristics such as 'soft fascination' or a feeling of 'being away' which counteract the cognitive and attentional effort that come along with urban daily life challenges.…”

“…In summary, results regarding delay discounting were inconclusive: while saturation-which was associated with naturalness in our sample-was related to less impulsive decision-making, the effect of overall edge density and the perceived percentage of nature went in the opposite direction. However, the existing evidence mostly suggests that viewing natural scenes (compared to urban scenes) is associated with reduced impulsive decision-making in delay discounting tasks ( [19,35], but see also [36]). It has to be noted that those studies compared viewing 'purely' natural vs. urban scenes, while our study used photographs of urban window views with varying amounts of natural elements (i.e., mixed environments), for which effects on delay discounting might be less pronounced.…”

“…Furthermore, given the high prevalence of depression and anxiety worldwide [33], especially in urban environments [34], finding ways to improve these mental health outcomes is a globally relevant public health concern. For cognition, we assessed impulsive decision-making in a delay discounting task, whereby previous studies showed mixed findings with regard to nature and impulsive decision-making [35,36] and the specific association between window views and impulsive decision-making remains therefore unclear (see [19]). Impulsive decision-making in delay discounting tasks is related to health behaviors like smoking, nutrition, and exercise frequency (e.g., [37]); therefore, increasing delay discounting could help to improve various health outcomes in the population.…”

Promoting Healthy Decision-Making via Natural Environment Exposure: Initial Evidence and Future Directions

“…We have further combined the above lines of research to determine if exposure to natural environments also decreases "impulsive" air quality choices. Evidence suggests that individuals respond in a more self-controlled way for ecological decisions related to air quality with exposure to natural as opposed to built environments (Berry et al, 2019). These results were associated with expanded space perception as previously shown (e.g., Repke et al, 2018).…”