There is more than meets the eye: Evidences of a multi-sensory and restorative experience of nature in a French urban park.

Abstract

As we move along in this century, western societies appear more and more separated from nature, notably in urban contexts. However, regular contacts with urban nature have been shown to have positive effects on human health, well-being, cognitive and psychological restoration. In this context, studies demonstrate that urban parks give urban dwellers the opportunities to have contacts and live experiences of nature (Soga & Gaston, 2016). This experience of nature is complex and multisensory (Clayton et al., 2017). Sensory experience of nature has been considered mostly through monosensory studies, especially vision and audition. In contrast, despite its importance in the construction of human self and identity, the sense of smell remains poorly included in the understanding of individual psychological relations to nature. By applying a two steps quantitative study in one park in the heart of Paris, we aimed to (i) determine whether visitors could describe their experience of nature focusing on one or several senses, (ii) identify the potential importance of olfaction in this multisensory experience and (iii) identify the main dimensions used by visitors to describe this experience. A site survey was then conducted from May to August in 2016 and 2017, studying how visitors describe their sensory experience (first multi-sensory, then focusing on smells). Based on the answers from 765 French adult respondents, we showed that 65% of them used one or more of their senses to describe their experience, with the olfaction being the most used sense in the multisensory part of the study. This result goes against the common belief that people usually are hardly able to provide descriptions of sensory experiences. Among the main dimensions used to describe their experience (biodiversity, non-living natural elements, memories and well-being), we found that 37% of the respondents referred to well-being and positive states in their description, even if they were not asked about it, and that these respondents were also the most connected to nature. We discuss these results referring to the restoration theories and call for more multisensory studies, highlighting the importance the sensory dimension of the experience of nature should take in urban planning and management plans to provide parks with optimal sensory experiences and potential restorative places to city dwellers.