Where do urban residents go to restore? A comparative mixed-methods study on psychological experiences in everyday favourite urban indoor and outdoor places

Improving understanding of options for psychological restoration and wider positive psychological experiences in cities is crucial, considering that the majority of the world population spends most of their time in urban settings. The current study investigates and compares self-reported restorative experiences and features of these experiences related to activity affordances and the social context in a wide range of urban natural and built settings, including both outdoor (e.g., parks, forests, bluespace but also squares, streets, viewpoints) and indoor places (e.g., eating and drinking places, study places, museums, the home). The study is based on a large online survey on favourite places in cities. We recruited staff and students at six different universities in five countries (Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom; total n = 945). We quantify and compare self-reported psychological experiences of restoration and classify activity affordances and the context of restoration across place typologies. Analyses are based on a combination of statistical tests and data mining methods. We also present results from pilot sentiment analyses. We found that overall outdoor places scored higher than indoor places in self-reported psychological experiences, and around two-thirds of respondents' outdoor favourite places were natural ones. More variety was found among indoor places, with the home; eating and drinking places; and study places, university buildings or study rooms constituting together around two-thirds of responses. Despite relatively infrequent mentions, churches and spiritual centres, sports venues and, partially, museums, cinemas, and someone else's home were the indoor settings associated with greatest self-reported ratings of psychological experiences. Word frequency analyses showed that psychological restoration was mostly characterised by cognitive activities and socialisation – with variation among places. While in outdoor environments joy was the dominant emotion reported by respondents, in indoor places there was more variation in the emotional experiences with also trust and anticipation reported. This study contributes to going beyond the ‘nature versus built’ dichotomy in the examination of psychological experiences of restoration and affect in specific typologies of urban places. Overall, it shows that several natural and non-natural environments in cities can promote positive restorative and emotional experiences and offers a comparative overview of the activity affordances and social context features of such experiences.