Health benefits of viewing nature through windows: A meta-analysis

Abstract

Experiencing nature offers numerous health and well-being benefits, particularly for urban residents. Although the benefits of visiting natural environments are well documented, less is known about the health effects of experiencing nature without going outdoors-in particular, viewing it through building windows. This meta-analysis synthesizes findings from 28 studies encompassing 104 results to examine the relationship between window views of nature and human health. Improvements were reported across various physiological, psychological, and physical health measures, with most studies focused on psychological outcomes. The meta-analytic results indicate consistently positive effects, with particularly strong benefits in studies using physiological health measures and focusing on nature in urban settings. Although some publication bias was detected, correcting for it did not change the overall conclusions. These findings highlight the potential of integrating nature views into built environments as a practical strategy for enhancing public health, particularly in urban areas.

Keywords: ecosystem services; human–nature interactions; nature dose; personalized ecology; urbanization.

Figure 1.

The process and outcome of the literature search. After we removed duplicates for the database search, 685 articles remained. During the title and abstract screening stage, we excluded studies that did not focus on the relationship between viewing nature through windows and health, as well as nonempirical studies. Following this, we reviewed the full text of 68 articles and identified 27 case studies. To identify additional relevant studies, we examined the reference lists of these 27 articles, which led to one more study being eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis.

Figure 2.

Overview of the characteristics of the 28 case studies (104 study results). The study results are categorized by (a) study design (interventional or noninterventional), (b) study context (residential, workplace, educational, healthcare, leisure, or correctional), (c) sample characteristics (female-biased or non-female-biased), (d) type of nature viewed (managed, general, or wild), (e) type of health outcomes (physiological, psychological, or physical), and (f) publication year.

Figure 3.

Results of overall meta-analysis of the relationship between viewing nature through windows and human health.

Figure 4.

Assessment of potential publication bias through a trim-and-fill analysis (n = 104). The filled circles represent the observed data (104 study results), with the x-axis displaying the effect size measure (Fisher's z-transformed correlation) and the y-axis representing study precision (standard error). The trim-and-fill analysis, conducted using the R0 estimator (Duval and Tweedie 2000) via the “trimfill” function from the “metafor” package (Viechtbauer 2010) in R, identified 21 missing results, shown as open circles.