2012 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 8-12
There are increasing social expectations of the potential recovery effect of restorative natural environments to psychologically and physically relieve daily stress. This report focuses on the restorative effect of the forest environment from natural environments, as has been clarified scientifically for around a decade in domestic research. Although often previously used in questionnaires in the medical psychology field, e.g. POMS or STAI to date, questionnaires from the environment psychology field such as PRS have recently been used to investigate the psychological restorative effect. Moreover, considerable scientific evidence of the physical restorative effect has been accumulated by several physiological indexes, from both short- and long-term stays in the forest environment. When introducing historical studies of those fields, and from the perspective of personal differences in the restorative effects, different personality traits resulting in individual differences in the psychological restorative effect in the forest environment were highlighted. Subsequently, research was conducted based on this awareness, attempting to elucidate the links between personality traits and the psychological restorative effects of the forest environment.
