Impacts of landscape visual elements on the physiological and psychological responses of recreational visitors in urban pocket parks.

Pocket parks are small and accessible urban green spaces that may support short-term restorative experiences in high-density urban environments. However, evidence remains limited regarding how specific visual landscape characteristics are associated with psychological and physiological responses. This study quantified 11 visual landscape indicators at 30 observation points in 10 pocket parks in Fuzhou, China, using panoramic imagery and semantic segmentation. Repeated observations were collected from 50 university students during field exposure, including measures of environmental preference, perceived restorativeness, heart rate variability, and skin conductance. Multiple linear regression models were used as the primary analysis, with linear mixed-effects models conducted as a supplementary sensitivity analysis to account for the repeated-measures structure. The primary analyses indicated that higher proportions of trees, shrubs, lawns, and distant mountain views were generally associated with higher ratings of environmental preference and perceived restorativeness, whereas higher proportions of buildings, hard-paved surfaces, and fences, together with greater spatial enclosure, were generally associated with less favorable psychological evaluations. Selected physiological indicators, including heart rate, pNN50, LF/HF, and skin conductance level, were also associated with visual landscape characteristics. Stratified analyses further suggested that these associations varied across recreational space types, with vegetation-related characteristics showing particularly notable associations in architectural/structural spaces. The supplementary mixed-effects analyses indicated that some context-specific associations remained evident after accounting for repeated observations, particularly the positive associations between shrub proportion and environmental and physiological responses in architectural/structural spaces. Taken together, these findings suggest that the relationships between visual landscape characteristics and psychological and physiological responses may be context-dependent. The findings provide evidence that vegetation visibility, visual openness, and the configuration of landscape elements may inform health-supportive and restoration-oriented pocket park design. However, the observed relationships should be interpreted as short-term associations specific to the participant sample, study sites, and field conditions examined.