Effects Of Different Rural Productive Landscapes On Residents’ Physical And Mental Restoration In Shaanxi Province

Along with the rapid development of urbanization and the growing pressure of modern life,people’s bodies and minds are facing a huge threat,and the need for a healthy environment is becoming increasingly urgent.Several studies have demonstrated that the natural environment is beneficial to human health,and the value of rehabilitative environment is gradually insighted and developed,while the study on the rehabilitative value of rural productive landscape,as one of the important components of natural landscape,is still lacking.In this study,three types of typical rural productive landscapes(farmland,terraced fields,and forest fruits)in Shaanxi Province were taken as examples,and nine landscape types were selected for the study according to their different weathering periods(leaf development,flowering,and harvesting),and "rural alleyway environment" was set as the control group,and virtual reality(VR)equipment was used as the visual carrier to monitor by monitoring different brain waves(EEG)of the respondents and comparing their positive and negative emotion scores(PANAS)and perceived recovery scores(PRS),we investigated the benefits of different productive rural landscapes on residents’ physical and psychological recovery to identify the differences in healing between different landscape groups and further analyze the reasons.Also,the effects of individual differences(landscape preference,landscape familiarity,and individual depression levels)on environmental recovery differences were explored.The findings of the study are as follows.(1)Short-term viewing of rural productive landscapes based on VR devices can provide physiological and psychological stress-relieving benefits.In contrast,the control group(rural alley space)showed inconsistent physiological and psychological recovery performance,specifically significant physiological recovery effects but not significant psychological ones.(2)Among the productive landscape types,terraces had the best restoration effect,followed by farmland,while forest fruits had the least restoration effect.In terms of the phenological stage,the recovery effect was most significant in the maturity stage compared to the leafing and flowering stages.(3)Respondents’ preference for productive landscapes was significantly and positively correlated with psychological recovery,i.e.,the higher the preference,the better the recovery benefit of the landscape.In addition,among the nine groups of productive landscapes involved in this study,terraced landscapes in the ripening and blooming stages were the environments with the highest preference of respondents,while forest and fruit landscapes in the leaf-spreading stage were the environments with the lowest preference scores.The control group(rural lane space)had a low preference degree relative to the productive landscape group.(4)Familiarity positively influenced the level of perceived recovery in rural landscapes,with environments with high familiarity being more likely to elicit preference from respondents,which in turn promoted stress-relieving benefits of the environment.(5)Under short-term visual VR rustic productive landscape stimuli,respondents’ individual depression levels were negatively correlated with preference and perceived recovery levels,i.e.,the higher the depression level,the lower the perceived recovery level,and the worse the preference assessment of the landscape.Mild depression can be seen as the threshold for the positive recovery effect of short-term viewing of rural landscapes.This research is intended to provide a theoretical basis and reference for future health promotion-oriented rural landscape planning and design.