Colour Preference and Healing in Digital Roaming Landscape: A Case Study of Mental Subhealth Populations

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Sep 2;19(17):10986. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191710986.

Abstract

From the perspective of emotional preference, studies have been conducted about landscape healing for subhealth people in the National High-Tech Zone (the study area). Combined with a preliminary practice investigation, Unity 2019 was used to make a digital roaming landscape, and 91 subjects with a history of mental subhealth diseases were randomly invited to participate in the immersive experimentation of the Human-Machine Environment Synchronisation (ErgoLAB) platform. After the experiment, the subjects were invited to fill in a Likert scale as the control group. The interest preference, emotion fluctuation, and healing effect of landscape colour were verified. The results show that: (1) The variation trend of interest reflected the concentration of interest in landscape, and the order of degree of interest, ranging from high to low, went Green > Yellow > Blue > Red > Orange > Purple > Cyan. (2) The subjects' interest in landscape colour was correlated with the arousal of positive emotions. The correlation between interest in landscape colour and positive emotions, from high to low, went Blue > Green > Yellow, while the correlation between red, cyan, orange, and purple was not significant. (3) The mean skin conductance (SC) fluctuation variance of subjects was 5.594%, which confirmed that the healing effect of digital roaming landscape scenes was significant under the state of low arousal. According to the Likert scale data, subjects' scores of the healing effect of landscapes, from high to low, went as follows: Green > Yellow > Red > Blue > Cyan > Orange > Purple. The results provide a new method for demonstrating the logical relationship between the digital landscape interest experience-emotional awakening-healing effect and providing a theoretical method and construction scheme for landscape colour configuration in the implementation of landscape healing projects.

Keywords: emotional preference; healing effect; landscape colour; mental subhealth.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Arousal
  • Color
  • Color Perception*
  • Emotions*
  • Humans

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the Major Project of the National Social Science Fund (NSSF) of China, “Theoretical and Practical Innovations for Evaluation Systems of Art Theory” (No. 21ZD11), sponsor: F.G.; and the Culture and Tourism IP Design based on AR/VR technology (No. 202002064005). This research was also supported by Hubei Province Ecological Environmental Design Research Center, sponsor: Z.L.