Access to nature and adolescents’ psychological well-being
type: CreativeWork
description: Previous research has demonstrated positive associations between the greenness of high school landscapes and school-wide academic performance. We do not know, however, if green landscapes cause better performance or if the association between the two is a product of self-selection. If there is a causal relationship, the pathways through which green school landscapes affect student performance remain unclear. Furthermore, evidence regarding exposure to nature and adolescents’ everyday stress in ecologically valid settings is lacking. We do not know, for example, whether adolescents who hang out in greener places – compared to their peers who hang out in less green places – during their daily activities experience less stress or better moods. Lack of this knowledge prevents landscape architects from making informed design and management decisions that help create places where children thrive. In addition, methods that can capture adolescents’ travel patterns and actual interactions with their environments are needed in health research. To address these issues, this dissertation includes a review of the current literature and two empirical studies: the Window View study and the Nature Tracking study. In the Window View study, I hypothesize that views to green landscapes help students recover from mental fatigue and stress. To test these hypotheses, I conducted an experiment with 94 high school students at five high schools. Participants were randomly assigned to three kinds of classrooms: 1) without windows, 2) with windows that opened onto a built space, 3) with windows that opened on to a green space. Participants engaged in typical classroom activities followed by a break in the classroom to which they were assigned. I measured participants attentional functioning using a standard battery of test and their physiological stress using a Biofeedback device. Results demonstrate that classroom views to green landscapes cause significantly better performance on tests of a…
abstract: Previous research has demonstrated positive associations between the greenness of high school landscapes and school-wide academic performance. We do not know, however, if green landscapes cause better performance or if the association between the two is a product of self-selection. If there is a causal relationship, the pathways through which green school landscapes affect student performance remain unclear. Furthermore, evidence regarding exposure to nature and adolescents’ everyday stress in ecologically valid settings is lacking. We do not know, for example, whether adolescents who hang out in greener places – compared to their peers who hang out in less green places – during their daily activities experience less stress or better moods. Lack of this knowledge prevents landscape architects from making informed design and management decisions that help create places where children thrive. In addition, methods that can capture adolescents’ travel patterns and actual interactions with their environments are needed in health research. To address these issues, this dissertation includes a review of the current literature and two empirical studies: the Window View study and the Nature Tracking study. In the Window View study, I hypothesize that views to green landscapes help students recover from mental fatigue and stress. To test these hypotheses, I conducted an experiment with 94 high school students at five high schools. Participants were randomly assigned to three kinds of classrooms: 1) without windows, 2) with windows that opened onto a built space, 3) with windows that opened on to a green space. Participants engaged in typical classroom activities followed by a break in the classroom to which they were assigned. I measured participants attentional functioning using a standard battery of test and their physiological stress using a Biofeedback device. Results demonstrate that classroom views to green landscapes cause significantly better performance on tests of a…
author: Li, Dongying
language: en
keywords: nature, adolescents' well-being, space-time access, causal relationship
date published: 2017-03-01T16:36:55Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:26:37Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95484