The Psychological Effects and Benefits of Using Green Spaces in the City: A Field Experiment with Young Polish Adults

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Theoretical foundation of this work is very weak. Authors need to present review of literature section by presenting the stream of the relevant research.

Also, limitation could become the part of the conclusion. Conclusion parts had to address theoretical contribution and practical implication of this work.

Authors need to why the student sample is adequate to accomplish the goal of this research.

Authors also need to present the statistical method as more organized manners.  

Author Response

Reviev 1

Theoretical foundation of this work is very weak. Authors need to present review of literature section by presenting the stream of the relevant research.

Also, limitation could become the part of the conclusion. Conclusion parts had to address theoretical contribution and practical implication of this work.

Authors need to why the student sample is adequate to accomplish the goal of this research.

Authors also need to present the statistical method as more organized manners.  

 

 

Thank you very much for all your guidance. We have expanded the literature review by adding more literature in the text both in the introduction and discussion. We have completely modified the Conclusion chapter. In the introduction we explain the reasons for conducting the experiment on students. The description of statistics has also been revised.

Thank you very much for all your valuable comments which improved the quality of our work.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Recommendation

We advise the authors to perform major revisions on the manuscript. 

Overview and general recommendation

We found the article interesting and fairly aligned with some of the journal’s specific fields of interest (e.g., urban forests, forests and nature-based recreation, human dimensions). The content of the manuscript is adequately clear and well presented. However, below are some observations we think the authors must address in order to meet the standards necessary for publishing.

Thank you very much for your kindness and interest in our research. We tried to take into account all the reviewer's comments:

Introduction

The period from line 38 to 43 seems a little out of context with respect to what precedes (the importance of mental health) and follows it (disconnection from the natural world). Some context should be added by introducing the bases for seeking a better mental health state through nature exposure.

A well-introduced reference was made to Blue and Green Infrastructures (BGIs) (starting from line 64). However, an explicit reference to the theoretical framework of Ecosystem Services (ES), and Cultural Ecosystem Services specifically, which are by no doubt the main focus of the manuscript, is lacking; given that the theme obviously permeates the whole manuscript, and given its great trans-disciplinarity and policy-relevance, we think it is fundamental that Cultural ES are referred to in relation to discussing the positive benefits of Urban BGIs.

We suggest anticipating the research question (introduced from line 92), clearly stating that the interest is focused on comparing open and covered spaces.

We think the “regenerative/restorative effects” (line 96, but also 82) should be better explained, described, and clarified in the introduction, as it remains too vague a concept.

We have significantly improved the Introduction chapter. We hope that now the various threads are much better related to each other. We have added a reference to ES, in particular culture ecosystem services.

 

Methods

This section was rather clear and complete. In subsection 2.4, please specify which statistical “further analyses” were carried out and why, otherwise they are discussed in the results and appear in the tables with no previous clarification. The F ratio appears in the tables without having been discussed before.

Thank you for your valuable comments statistical methods have been described in more detail.

Results

At present, subsection 3.1 appears out of context and does not provide any useful additional information. Add a paragraph to the Methods section, where a more in-depth description of what internal consistencies are and why it is important  to evaluate them should be provided. Then Table 2 can be presented in subsection 3.1.

Thank you very much for this comment, indeed subsection 3.1. was a bit off from the others, we omitted it at this stage of the manuscript work.

 Limitations

We appreciated many of the intrinsic limitations of the study were acknowledged and interpreted as an opportunity for future improvement in this line of research. Unfortunately, leading the experiment in only one season is extremely limiting, especially when dealing with forests. Indeed, defoliation is such that the connotation of forests as both “covered” and “green” disappears. We understand that, coherently with this, your main objective became assessing the difference between open vs covered spaces in their beneficial impact on people’s psycho-physical state. However, this aspect must be better acknowledged in this section.

Furthermore, you state that “autumn is the most dangerous time of year for people’s mental health” (line 371). Do you have a reference for this? Please find some supporting literature. Also, you should explain what is meant by “most dangerous”: how can this be quantified? For instance, many studies report higher suicidal rates in the spring-summer months (e.g. see “Partonen, T.; Haukka, J.; Nevanlinna, H.; et al. (2004). Analysis of the seasonal pattern in suicide. Journal of Affective Disorders, 81, 133–139”). There might be some evidence in support of what you are stating, but you need to be more rigorous and report it in the text.

It could be advisable to also discuss, in this very section or in the Discussion, the fact that the respondents in the study were informed beforehand regarding the procedure and the observation surfaces, and what effect on their rating this might have had.

Thank you for such a valuable comment. Indeed, we overinterpreted the fact by stating that "autumn is the most dangerous time of year for people's mental health", we had in mind that the weather conditions that prevail in autumn significantly negatively affect people's health. We have corrected our error.

 

Other comments

 

We think the title should be revised. First, “polish” should be capitalized.

More importantly, mentioning “green spaces” is misleading with respect to what is really the focus of the manuscript. We suggest omitting “green spaces” and instead focus on the open vs covered distinction.

Thank you for your valuable comments. We have long considered the suggested change to open and covered areas, but due to the comparative analysis of forest, meadow and water reservoir, we have stayed with the current naming.

There is a repeated period at the beginning of subsection 3.4. Eliminate one.

 

 Figures and table

Quality of Figure 1, 2 and 3 is too little. Try to improve the number of pixels (e.g. dpi), especially for text in Fig. 1 and 3. Since these figures are not strictly necessary, but rather ancillary (apart for Fig. 2, which is informative relative to presenting and discussing the rationale behind choosing interval timings, routes and so on), their quality and readability should be improved, otherwise they become useless.

We tried very hard to improve the quality of the Figure1,2, 3, but it loses its quality when placed in the manuscript. We will still fix it with the editor.

All tables should be reformatted in such a way that a single number or piece of text fits on the same line, to increase interpretability of results.

Is there a specific reason why in the Tables BGI elements were presented in the order forest-meadow-water-street? Because this is neither the walk order nor an ascending-descending order following the rankings.

Table 1. Caption indicates those presented are average values. Are the second numbers the Standard Deviations or the other extreme of the interval in which values range? If the former, then add SD to the caption; if the latter, modify the caption by saying range intervals rather than averages.

The tables have been corrected. We have added descriptions under the tables.

Thank you very much for all your valuable comments which improved the quality of our work.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper which titled is “The psychological effects benefits of using green spaces in the 2 city: a field experiment with young polish adults”  interesting but there is space to improve the paper.

The literature should be extended to cover recent studies in the field. Year 2022 studies should be added.

 

Discussion section does not provide linkages to relevant papers. A discussion in this respect is necessary. This section should also be extended in order to provide policy suggestions which is missing.

Author Response

The paper which titled is “The psychological effects benefits of using green spaces in the 2 city: a field experiment with young polish adults”  interesting but there is space to improve the paper.

The literature should be extended to cover recent studies in the field. Year 2022 studies should be added.

Discussion section does not provide linkages to relevant papers. A discussion in this respect is necessary. This section should also be extended in order to provide policy suggestions which is missing.

Thank you for all your comments of course we have added the missing literature throughout the article.

Reviewer 4 Report

Please see attached comments

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comments General comments

The title is missing something: The psychological effects and? benefits of using green spaces in the city: A field experiment with young polish adults.

Thank you for your attention of course the conjunction "and" was overlooked by us, in the current version the notation is already correct.

Full stops are used in Table 2 while commas are used in the other tables. Please choose one format and be consistent

Thank you very much, the record has been consolidated.

Editorial comments

 
Line 17: ... to date suggests that the level of benefits derived from contact with nature depends on the quality ....

 
Line 51: factor that is often overlooked in diagnosing this serious..... Do you mean prevention instead of diagnosing....?

We have corrected both sentences, thank you for your attention.

Specific comments

Method
The study design is pre- and post-test design. The study would have been more effective if different study participants were used for each exposure, compared to the control, probably using paired t- test or ANOVA as appropriate. The way I understand it, the control was measured first before participants were moved consecutively from one exposure to the next. Currently, the study is testing the cumulative effects of a number of exposures, one after another. In that way, it is difficult to attribute the effects measured after the last exposure to the last exposure only as the participants were exposed to other exposures prior to that. We can only attribute effects independently to the second exposure. Admittedly, the authors acknowledged this in the limitations section where they admitted that they could be dealing with the cumulative effect of renewal/fatigue at the last stage of the walk. The authors indicated that “they were aware of this, which is why the tests were completed at the longest possible but comparable intervals (walk time + exposure time), each time at a given exposure point”. However, this does not solve the problem. The effects after the last exposure can be attributed to all the exposures and cannot be attributed to one independently. This has implications on the applicability of the results, after all how many individuals are exposed to all the exposures one after another in that order? We may not even compare the measures one against another.

We fully agree with the reviewer's comments. And as before, we recognize the limitations of our research. We hope to eliminate them gradually with further experiments undertaken.

Limitations
The effects on the results of gender can be handled by analysing the results by gender and comparing if there are significant differences

Yes, we agree with the reviewer's position, however, we would like to point out that in our experiment there was no quantitative balance between men and women, for this reason comparing the results with reference to gender is not purposeful. In future studies, we will take care of the gender ratio. Although, as we mention in the limitation this is not easy due to the disparity between the students.

Conclusion
From the design of the study we cannot make the following comparisons and conclusions “a short walk in the midst of open areas of urban greenery that provide wider viewing opportunities brings psychological restoration greater than walking in a covered space such as forests or street greenery . The greatest re-education of negative emotions can be achieved by being surrounded by water, or in contact with a vast grassy area. Areas where water is present allow a much greater degree of relaxation compared to forest areas”.

Thank you very much, we have changed the whole chapter "conclusion".

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

^{The text has improved a lot through the revision process.}

^{However, the typos are still there. The entire document needs to be reviewed.}

^{Also, I am still wondering that what criteria are the four different spaces set? Do the four different spaces have scientifically exclusive features? Need to provide the explanation for these.} 

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. The errors have been corrected. We hope that our article does not contain any more errors.
We decided to conduct the experiment in four different urban green areas representing four different forms of land cover. The key to the choice was the openness of the spaces. In two of the spaces (meadow and water) the perceptual properties were open, wide, in the other two they were limited (forest and street), as we mention in the abstract.

Reviewer 2 Report

We would like to point out the following mistakes:

L. 47: "Therfore" is mispelled;

L. 66: There is a full stop missing between two subsequent sentences. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. The errors have been corrected.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have responded to most of my concerns

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind evaluation of our work.