An Empirical Study on the Effects of Viewing Forest on Human Physical and Mental Health

By surveying Beijing Yanqing City and Yanqing Songshan Forest Park through field experiments, we assessed the effects of the forest landscapes on the human blood pressure, heart rate variability (HRV), mood states, environmental recovery and environmental perception. As results, the forest environment restoration was significantly higher than that in urban environment. The forest environment significantly reduced the participants' negative emotions, increased their positive emotions, and this effect is not limited by the type of activity. The forest environment improved the overall regulation ability of human's autonomic nervous system, increased the parasympathetic regulation of the heart, and improved blood pressure, making blood pressure close to be ideal. The different activities in forest environment have different impact on blood pressure and heart rate. In the future study, the social factors that affect the physical and mental health of the human into forest environment should be investigated, the effects of different forest types on the human health should be explored, and the brain neural action mechanism on the positive effect of the nature on human health should be probed while combined with the brain imaging technology.