# Effects of green-wall layouts on psychological and physiological responses in office environments: a virtual-environment study

## TL;DR

This study uses virtual reality to show that different green-wall designs in offices have varying effects on stress recovery and relaxation.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel examination of how green-wall geometry affects psychological and physiological responses in office environments.

## Key findings

- All green-wall conditions outperformed the no-green-wall condition in reducing fatigue and improving relaxation.
- Curvilinear green walls were most effective in reducing fatigue and enhancing attention compared to linear and polyline designs.
- Polyline green walls showed limited benefits, mainly increasing arousal but underperforming in other physiological indicators.

## Abstract

Office greenery is closely related to employees’ physical and mental health. Green walls have been shown to provide biophilic and emotional health benefits; however, previous studies have mostly focused on the presence or absence of green walls or on their coverage area, and have rarely examined how their overall geometric morphology differentially affects users.

In this study, we used virtual reality (VR) to construct four types of office scenarios, namely a curvilinear green wall (CGW), a linear green wall (LGW), a polyline green wall (PGW), and a no green wall condition (NGW), and evaluated their restorative effects after stress induction using MAST. On the psychological level, we adopted the Fatigue Scale FS-14 and the Restoration Outcome Scale ROS; on the physiological level, we recorded EEG data and used β∕α, (α + θ)∕β, θ∕β, and θ∕α to represent arousal, fatigue, attention, and relaxation, respectively, and calculated FAA to reflect motivational states.

The results showed that: (1) all three green-wall conditions were significantly superior to NGW in subjective ratings and EEG indicators, indicating that green walls can bring significant health benefits. (2) Regarding green-wall morphology, CGW was the most effective in reducing the fatigue index and reached a medium effect size compared with LGW; it also ranked first in enhancing attention and relaxation, although its differences from LGW did not reach statistical significance. This suggests that the curvilinear morphology further strengthens fatigue recovery while retaining the general advantages of green walls. (3) Compared with the other groups, PGW was overall disadvantaged across the EEG ratios; it only showed a small effect-size difference from CGW on arousal and achieved the highest median value. This indicates that the advantage of PGW lies mainly in enhancing arousal, whereas its other physiological performances do not reach the level of the more typical green-wall conditions.

These findings indicate that, although all types of green walls are effective in promoting fatigue recovery compared with the no-green-wall group, their effects are not uniform; green-wall morphology can effectively modulate recovery effects and present differentiated advantages across different dimensions.