An experimental test of the impact of avian diversity on attentional benefits and enjoyment of people experiencing urban green-space

Biodiversity may play a key role in generating the well-being benefits of visiting green-spaces.

The ability of people to accurately perceive variation in biodiversity is, however, unclear and evidence supporting links between biodiversity exposure and well-being outcomes remains equivocal. In part, this is due to the paucity of controlled experimental studies that deal adequately with confounding factors that covary with biodiversity.

Attention restoration theory (ART) proposes that natural environments contain many softly fascinating stimuli that provide visitors with a sense of separation from their normal settings and routines, switching off direct attention and allowing recovery from attention fatigue. Increased biodiversity could increase these stimuli, and ART therefore potentially provides a mediating effect linking biodiversity to well-being.

Here, we conduct a controlled experiment in which participants virtually experience urban green-space containing high and low le...

生物多样性（biodiversity）或许在产生绿地游览所带来的福祉效益方面发挥关键作用。

然而，人们准确感知生物多样性变化的能力仍不明确，且支持生物多样性接触与福祉结局之间存在关联的证据依旧模棱两可。究其部分缘由，当前缺乏能够充分控制与生物多样性共变的混杂因素的对照实验研究。

注意力恢复理论（Attention Restoration Theory, ART）指出，自然环境中存在诸多柔和迷人的刺激物，可令游览者产生脱离日常环境与固有生活轨迹的感受，使主动注意力暂时关闭，助力人们从注意力疲劳中得以恢复。生物多样性的提升能够增加这类刺激物的数量，因此该理论可为生物多样性与福祉之间的关联提供中介效应的解释路径。

本研究开展一项对照实验，参与者将在实验中虚拟体验包含高、低（原文后续内容未完整展示）的城市绿地。