The Effect of Plants on Individuals' Stress Level in an Indoor Work Environment

Many instances of sick leave can be linked to diseases caused by stress. An efficient way to counter the negative effects of stress is coping. However, trying to fit coping activities into an already busy schedule can be stressful in itself. Therefore it is interesting to study passive stress-reducing methods, for instance interaction with nature. This paper studied the effect of the presence of plants in a work-like environment on the stress level of 30 participants divided equally in a control group and a test group by measuring their heart rate. A factorial analysis of variance and a multivariate analysis of variance were used to analyze the data. Despite the heart rate of the control group being on an average 5 beats per minute higher than the test group, the difference was found not to be statistically significant. An explanation for this could be the poor reliability of heart rate as a measure of stress. Keywords: coping, heart rate, indoors, nature, plants, stress, wor