Perceived restorativeness in digitally mediated environments

Restorative environments are settings that people perceive as supporting recovery from attentional fatigue or stress. Such qualities have been studied not only in physical environments but also in virtual and other digitally mediated settings. However, little is known about perceived restorativeness during routine use of commercial exercise platforms and about the role of experiential and perceptual characteristics in these appraisals. The present study examined retrospective perceived restorativeness in Zwift, a screen-based digital cycling platform, and its associations with enjoyment, social interaction, and perceived realism and immersion. In a cross-sectional online survey, 154 active Zwift users rated the perceived restorativeness of familiar virtual worlds that they used regularly. Linear regression models also included sociodemographic characteristics and exploratory indicators of broad landscape composition. Enjoyment, social interaction, and perceived realism and immersion were positively associated with retrospective perceived restorativeness. Their inclusion increased the explained variance from 4.9% to 48.9% in the final model. A supplementary mixed-effects analysis detected no statistically significant differences across four broad landscape categories. Because participants evaluated only familiar, self-selected worlds, and because the two most preferred worlds were also the two stylized fictional worlds, the independent contribution of landscape composition could not be separated from preference, familiarity, and repeated use. The findings indicate that retrospective perceived restorativeness during routine Zwift use is closely related to how users experience the platform, whereas the role of broad landscape composition remains unclear.