Work

Restorative streetscapes in high-density urban tourism: environmental archetypes, visual attention, and psychophysiological responses

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: In high-density tourist districts, visitors are continuously exposed to the visual environments of surrounding streets, forecourts, and small public spaces before reaching an attraction, and these transitional spaces may influence short-term restorative states. Existing research has typically examined urban-scale streetscape characteristics and human responses under experimental conditions separately, with limited provision of a reproducible procedure for selecting experimental stimuli from large environmental samples. Taking the high-density urban core around Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour as a case study, this study identified 66 tourism-related sites and acquired four fixed-direction streetscape images for each site, yielding 264 images in total. A 66 × 11 objective environmental matrix was constructed from five GIS-based environmental indicators and six streetscape-image proxy indicators. Principal component analysis (PCA) summarized the dominant environmental gradients, and k = 6 K-means was retained as a pragmatic six-group sampling solution aligned with the pre-specified six-scene experimental capacity rather than as a uniquely optimal or stable urban typology. Forty-six of 48 registered adults contributed 108 focal-scene exposures. After BH-FDR correction, significant differences among the six scenes were observed in perceived restorativeness, the proportion of fixations on natural areas of interest (AOIs), gaze entropy, changes in EEG alpha-minus-theta, mean EDA skin conductance level (SCL), and HRV RMSSD, whereas sustained-attention accuracy showed no significant scene effect. Oil Street Art Space exhibited the highest perceived restorativeness (5.69/7), the highest proportion of fixations on natural AOIs (51.4%), and the largest increases in EEG (+2.68) and HRV RMSSD (+11.37 ms), while Western Market showed the lowest restorativeness (4.17/7), the lowest natural-AOI fixation share (31.2%), and the smallest EEG increase (+1.93). Sensitivity analyses showed no evidence of scene-by-order interaction for perceived restorativeness, natural-AOI fixation, gaze entropy, or SART accuracy, but EEG, EDA, and HRV were more order-sensitive; the principal subjective, attentional, EEG, and HRV contrasts remained evident when analysis was restricted to each participant's earliest focal-scene exposure. These findings therefore support scene-configuration contrasts under short-term static visual exposure. Building on the environmental structure of the 66 sites and the multimodal responses to the six experimental scenes, the study further proposes an archetype-calibrated framework for mapping restorative potential in high-density tourist streetscapes, providing a spatial basis for identifying restorative opportunity nodes and priority intervention areas.

Source: Frontiers in Public Health

DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1981997

Authors: Xinliang Wang, Yafei Zhao, Xiang Xu, Xiaoju Li, Jingyuan Cheng

Institutions: Huainan Vocational Technical College, Tianjin University, Zhejiang University of Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Urban Green Space and Health

Subfield: Urban Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,801