Exposure to virtual nature: the impact of different immersion levels on skin conductance level, heart rate, and perceived relaxation

It is generally accepted that natural environments reduce stress and improve mood. Since access to natural environments is sometimes limited, virtual natural environments, especially monoscopic 360 degrees nature videos, offer a viable alternative. However, it remains unclear whether presenting monoscopic 360 degrees nature videos via a head-mounted display (HMD) or a PC monitor results in larger relaxation effects. Therefore, this study examined whether a monoscopic 360 degrees beach video presented with an HMD is significantly more relaxing than the same video presented via a PC screen, or no video at all (control condition), in altering skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR), and perceived relaxation. Overall, 102 adults (40.2% females, age range 19-62 years) participated in a counterbalanced, randomized, controlled, within-subject experiment. All participants were subjected to three stressors comprising different mental arithmetic tasks, followed by three different recovery phases (HMD, PC, control). For SCL, the results showed a significantly larger decrease in the HMD and PC than in the control condition, but no significant differences between the HMD and PC condition. For HR, there were no significant differences between the recovery conditions. However, the HMD condition was rated significantly more relaxing than the other conditions, with no significant differences between the PC and control condition. Exploratory analyses showed that these results were not moderated by the participants' age, gender, or technology anxiety. Overall, the psychophysiological results showed no significant benefit favoring the HMD over PC condition, although the self-reported relaxation ratings did. Future studies are warranted to clarify this divergence.