An Assessment of Psychological Noise Reduction by Landscape Plants


== Abstract ==

The emphasis in the term ‘Green Transportation’ is on the word ‘green’. Green transportation focuses on the construction of a slow transport system with a visually pleasing, easy and secure trip environment composed of urban parks, green roadside spaces and some other space that is full of landscape plants. This trip environment encourages residents to make trip choices that reduce fuel consumption and pollution and is one of the most important ways of popularizing green transportation. To study the psychological benefits provided by urban parks and other landscape environments, we combined a subjective approach (a questionnaire) with an objective quantitative approach (emotional tests using an electroencephalogram

EEG). Using a questionnaire survey, we found that 90% of the subjects believed that landscape plants contribute to noise reduction and that 55% overrated the plants’ actual ability to attenuate noise. Two videos (showing a traffic scene and a plant scene) were shown to 40 participants on video glasses. We detected and recorded EEG values with a portable electroencephalograph, and a comparison between the results of the two groups revealed that there was a highly significant asymmetry between the EEG activity of the vegetation scene and traffic scene groups. The results suggest that the emotions aroused by noise and visual stimuli are manifested in the synchronization of beta frequency band and the desynchronization of alpha frequency band, indicating that landscape plants can moderate or buffer the effects of noise. These findings indicate that landscape plants provide excess noise attenuating effects through subjects’ emotional processing, which we term ‘psychological noise reduction’.

Document type: Article

== Full document ==
<pdf>Media:Draft_Content_400628541-beopen74-6326-document.pdf</pdf>


== Original document ==

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

* [http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032] under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by

* [http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032] under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

* [http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3118876 http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3118876] under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

* [https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032 https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032]

* [https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032/pdf https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032/pdf]

* [http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032 http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032],
: [https://doaj.org/toc/1660-4601 https://doaj.org/toc/1660-4601] under the license cc-by

* [http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032/pdf http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032/pdf],
: [http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph8041032]

* [https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032 https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032],
: [https://doaj.org/article/06c1fa762f764d68949dbeeb114dada9 https://doaj.org/article/06c1fa762f764d68949dbeeb114dada9],
: [https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032/pdf https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/8/4/1032/pdf],
: [http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3118876 http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3118876],
: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695027 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695027],
: [https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20113168083 https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20113168083],
: [https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/1990957019 https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/1990957019] under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/