Enhancing Well-Being Through Positive Technology: VR Forest Bathing

TL;DR

This paper investigates how high-fidelity VR forest environments can reduce stress and improve cognitive functions, emphasizing the importance of realism over biomass presence, and explores future AI-driven customization.

Contribution

It provides comparative analysis of VR environments with varying fidelity and content, highlighting the benefits of realistic VR for well-being and cognitive enhancement.

Findings

High-fidelity VR environments outperform low-fidelity in stress reduction.

Realistic nature scenes improve executive functioning more than abstract art.

Biomass presence does not significantly affect stress relief.

Abstract

The growing demand for accessible therapeutic options has led to the exploration of Virtual Reality (VR) as a platform for forest bathing, which aims to reduce stress and improve cognitive functions. This paper brings together findings from three studies by the authors. The first study compared environments with and without plant life to examine how biomass influences stress reduction. The second study focused on the differences between low-fidelity and high-fidelity VR environments, while the third explored whether the benefits of VR forest bathing come from being immersed in realistic environments or simply from viewing something beautiful. The results showed no significant differences between environments with and without biomass, but highlighted the positive effects of high-fidelity VR environments and realistic nature over abstract art. The paper also covers how VR nature experiences may boost executive functioning and well-being in older adults and discusses the potential of generative AI to create customized VR environments. It concludes with a call for further collaborative research to refine VR forest bathing for stress relief and cognitive enhancement.