• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.127-137
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• 2015

Recent research has shown that university students experience severe stress and depleted directed attention due to study, social relationships, and economic dependency. Based on the stress reduction theory and the attention restoration theory, this study aims to investigate the effects of natural landscape on university students' stress and cognitive performance through a wide array of measurements including GSR(galvanic skin responsse), IBI(interbeat interval), ZIPERS(Zucherman Inventory of Personal Reactions), and mental arithmetic test. The restorative effects of natural landscape were compared with those of urban landscape. 128 university students participated in the study, and the data of 120 students was analyzed. The results showed that natural landscape was more restorative in relieving psychological stress and in enhancing cognitive performance than urban landscape, which evidenced the restorative effects of natural landscape. Therefore, it could be proposed that natural landscaping of the university campus contributes to students' stress reduction and cognitive enhancement. But such effects were not found in the two physiological measures(both GSR and IBI). Moreover, it was analyzed that urban landscape had a more beneficial effect than natural landscape for IBI, which might resulted from the participants' characteristics and the study landscape. Specifically, the young age span of the participants(average 23.8 years old) and the very natural setting of the university where they were enrolled might lead to the conflicting results in physiological measures. Also, the urban landscape used in the study had a sense of "scope", which is one of the Kaplan and Kaplan's restorative characteristics. Based on this opinion, it was suggested that future study should investigate the impact of the landscape type and contents as well as the participants' characteristics on the restorative effects of natural landscape.