Rethinking the nature vs. urban environment dichotomy: Aligning research classifications with human visual perception

Recent research in the field of environmental psychology starts to question whether the commonly assumed positive impact of exposure to nature environments on behaviour, health and wellbeing is specific to nature per se, or rather reflects implicit biases in the selection of environments under investigation and experimental assumptions. Here, we implemented spatial multi-arrangement methodology to obtain similarity ratings for three key factors proposed to differ between nature and urban scenes, namely fascination, liking and visual discomfort. This methodology allowed us to directly compare a wide range of nature and urban scenes from across the world. Using representational similarity analysis, the three factors were found to be strongly correlated and varied substantially within as well as across categorical boundaries. An empirical model where environments were differentiated by degrees of similarity was a better predictor of fascination, liking and visual discomfort than models reflecting theoretical and empirical (naturalness) distinctions between nature and urban environments. From this, we conclude that a dichotomous “nature versus urban” framework seems less important when people make psychological judgements about environments and might ultimately hinder our understanding of what exactly it is in an environment that impacts health and wellbeing. • Dichotomous nature-urban comparisons overlook significant environmental variability. • Participants rated environments for fascination, liking, and visual discomfort. • Spatial multi-arrangement revealed variability within and across scene categories. • A dichotomous nature-urban framework was a weaker predictor of environmental perceptions.