For our second client challenge, many groups proposed that Vancouver Film Studios (VFS) ‘greenify’ their property by growing shrubs plants on unused areas and/or by decorating the exteriors of their boring concrete stage buildings with green images. These groups argued that people who ventured onto the lot would be encouraged to be more sustainable themselves after noticing the green buildings or abundance of foliage. However, none of the groups provided any evidence to support their claims that literally making a place greener would make people behave greener as well. The idea itself seemed very intuitive and simple to implement, but the lack of evidence prompted me to explore this idea further.
Would replacing the grey concrete with green paint and foliage really persuade people to behave more sustainably?
After some extensive Google searches, I was unable to find any studies that suggested green spaces transformed litterers into recyclers.
But hope is not lost! While green spaces do not change people’s environmental behaviors, they DO provide a number of other interesting benefits:
- Reduced mental fatigue and stress – spending time in natural settings relieves mental fatigue and soothes humans.
- Safer neighborhoods – buildings surrounded with greenery have lower crime rates.
- Increased compassion – tying into the point above, being around plants improves relationships between people and increases empathy towards others.
- Improved human performance – spending time in green settings heightens feelings of vitality, which in turn increases energy levels leading to improved work performance.
- Improved concentration and memory – similar to improved work performance, the influence of nature sharpens task accuracy and can improve memory and attention span by 20%.
Clearly, VFS should consider turning their lot greener. The points above were taken from multiple studies investigating the effect of plants on human well being – what company doesn’t want their workers to perform at a high level?
Along with VFS, I suggest my fellow classmates to also heed their own recommendations and ‘greenify’ their study areas since finals are less than a month away! Time to take a look at my garden to see what will look good sitting at my desk…
Sources:
https://www.planning.org/cityparks/briefingpapers/saferneighborhoods.htm
https://www.popularresistance.org/hidden-benefits-of-community-gardens/
Hey Vincent,
You found some interesting benefits that green spaces provide! While I agree there is little research done on whether green spaces create positive green behaviours, I don’t think that constitutes there not being any correlation. But I do think there needs to be more research in to this area because, as you said, it seems intuitive. Especially when green spaces can cause reduced mental fatigue and stress, increased compassion, and less crime, which could all potentially have linkage to environmental behaviours.
Interestingly enough, psychology students here at UBC have started some preliminary research in to this exact topic and hopefully they will continue with it towards something more concrete and conclusive. Check out a news article about it here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/architects-change-recycling-habits-with-design-1.1332442