Perceived Restorativeness Scale: Influences of Type of Environment on Attentional Restoration

The goal of the study was to more clearly investigate the relation between reasons people seek outdoor environments and the potential restoration those environments may offer. The Perceived Restoration Scale (PRS) is based on Kaplan & Kaplan’s (1995) attention restoration theory (ART), which states that any prolonged mental effort leads to fatigue of focused attentional capacity. Environments including certain components foster restoration of the ability to focus attention because they hold non-taxing attention, and natural environments are thought to hold many of these components inherently. The reasons participants gave for seeking out natural environments were compared to their scores on the five subscales—or components—of the PRS (fascination, being away, compatibility, coherence, and scope). Participants seeking natural environments for connection purposes reported natural environments as more restorative than participants seeking natural environments for recreational reasons