The effects of digital nature and actual nature on stress reduction: A meta-analysis and systematic review

The study aims to conduct a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to assess the effects of digital nature and actual nature on stress reduction.

In August 2023, Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, PubMed, and EBSCOhost databases were used, and ten articles were in the analysis, with a total sample size of 886 participants. Studies within- or between-subjects design conducted in either a randomized controlled trial or a quasi-experimental design were included. No restriction was put on the year of publication or geographical region. Conference papers and dissertations were also included whereas, book chapters were excluded. Participants included those who were exposed to at least one form of digital nature exposure, such as static images, videos, 360° pictures, and 360° videos. The risk of bias determined through Review Manager 5.4 was used to assess the quality of the studies. STATA software package version 16 was used for visual analysis of funnel plots. For the assessment of potential publication bias, Egger's test was implemented.

Digital natural environments had the same level of stress recovery compared to actual environmental exposures with the same intervention content (SMD = -0.01; 95% CI: -0.15, 0.12). Subgroup analyses and meta-regression indicated that subjective or physiological stress measures, level of immersion, and data extraction method were not associated with pooled effect stress recovery. All subgroups showed comparable stress levels in both conditions. In addition, all included studies had different levels of risk of bias (low, moderate, and high).

The present study concludes that previous research has generally shown that stress levels are reduced in both digital and actual natural environments. The results of the meta-analysis support this conclusion with no significant differences between the two modes of stress recovery through nature viewing.