Biodiverse Landscapes and Restoring Benefit: A Connection Through Naturalness

Abstract Context Research has been associating urban nature with health and wellbeing; whereas many focus on the benefits of the availability of green spaces, only a few focus on the quality of natural environments. Moreover, the mental health of urban residents has become an issue in society. Therefore, thinking about ecological health and human health when designing green spaces is critical. Objectives This study asked the extent to which biodiversity of landscapes is associated with attention restoration and if naturalness is the characteristic shared between biodiverse landscapes and the restoring perception of landscapes. Methods This study conducted laboratory experiments. We used bird survey data of the Taipei Metropolitan area to represent the biodiversity levels of landscapes and took photographs on-site of those survey sites to be the intervention. Participants viewed the images and evaluated their restoring and natural perceptions of landscapes. Results There were 128 participants who attended the experiments. This study reported landscapes with greater avian species richness and the avian Shannon diversity index score were evaluated as more natural. Naturalness, the avian species richness, and the avian Shannon diversity index were all associated with higher attention restorativeness. Bird abundance did not find associations with either variable. The findings demonstrated that viewing landscape images of bird biodiverse landscapes reported with same restoring effects. Conclusion This study demonstrated direct and measurable mental wellbeing benefits of urban bird diversity from viewing images of landscapes. This research supports previous research findings and suggests the connections between bird diversity and mental wellbeing need more investigation.