ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1596154
Measuring restoration quality in urban forest greenways: Insights for planning and management
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanjing Academy of Landscape and Forestry Sciences, Nanjing, Liaoning Province, China
- 2Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Greenways play a crucial role in enhancing citizens' quality of life by providing restorative environments, particularly in settings such urban forests. While existing research underscores the superior restorative qualities of natural settings compared to urban environments, our understanding of how various urban forest greenways and seasonal variations shape restorative experiences remains limited. This study investigates the restoration effects of various greenway scenes within the urban forests, including one urban greenway, one wilderness greenway and one tended greenway. A total of 55 university students viewed six videotaped greenway scenes in a randomized order. The urban and wilderness greenways were presented only for the summer scenes, while the tended greenway was shown across all four seasons. Physiological responses were measured using Electroencephalography (EEG), while psychological responses, including attentional levels and restorative experiences, were assessed with the Necker Cube and the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS) respectively. This study confirmed previous research that the natural environment restored attention, and watching a combination of different types of greenways and seasons increased attentional level. Findings suggest that tended greenways offer more effective restoration compared to urban forest greenways. Notably, tended greenways in spring, summer, and autumn were more restorative than winter scenes. These findings highlight how different types of greenways and seasonal variations can affect perceived restorativeness. They provide valuable insights for the planning and management of urban forest greenways, emphasizing the importance of considering route selection, planting design, and maintenance to enhance restorative benefits.
Keywords: Green space, Urban forest, Route, attentional level, Health benefits
Received: 19 Mar 2025; Accepted: 25 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Liu, ZHANG and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xinxin Wang, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.