Lee and Yoon studied the effects of natural design elements on the experiences of people waiting in healthcare emergency departments. They report their “findings offer empirical evidence for the positive impact of including natural elements in these waiting areas. We created four high-fidelity virtual environments that incorporated natural elements in three ways, i.e., the presence of plants, the use of nature images and natural materials, and a combination of those two, in addition to a controlled environment without natural elements. We tested how subjects responded to each environmental setting. Our findings demonstrated that the inclusion of natural elements significantly lowered patients' anxiety in hospital environments, confirming previous research, and the presence of natural elements improved perceived wait time, as well as service quality through anxiety and perceived wait time. The combination yielded higher scores in anxiety, perceived wait time, and service quality than the other conditions.”
Jisun Lee and So-Yeon Yoon. 2023. “Nature and Patient Waiting: Mediating Effects of Anxiety and Perceived Wait Time on the Association Between Nature and Service Perception.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 91, 102113, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102113