Greener and quieter: A Swiss participatory mapping study on the choice of places for everyday restoration

Continuous urban growth with increased noise exposure of the residents makes public green spaces becoming increasingly important for everyday restoration. This study assessed how perceived restorativeness of green spaces is influenced by their physical characteristics, such as greenness and traffic noise, and subjective perceptual qualities. We conducted a participatory mapping survey among the Swiss population in which the respondents mapped the place of their most recent outdoor recreational activity and described the perceived restorativeness, feeling of being in nature, soundscape quality, and other sensory perceptions. These responses were linked to geospatial data on greenness (NDVI), land cover, and road traffic noise level (L day ) at the respondents’ restorative places and home locations. Our results show that people tend to choose greener and quieter places than their home environments for restoration, but those living in noisy areas have limited access to such spaces. Road traffic noise impaired self-reported soundscape quality and perceived restorativeness of the mapped places, particularly above 55 dB (L day ). Machine learning models explained up to 25% of the variance in perceived restorativeness in out of sample prediction. While geodata alone had limited predictive power for perceived restorativeness, adding perceptual variables (soundscape quality, feeling of being in nature, and sensory perceptions such as sounds, scents, visual impressions) substantially improved model performance. Our findings support the European Environment Agency’s recommendation of maintaining traffic noise levels below 55 dB (L day ) in quiet areas. They further show that restorativeness of a place strongly depends on how the environment is perceived by the individuals. • People choose greener and quieter places than their homes for everyday restoration. • People living at noisy places have limited availability of quiet restorative places. • Higher traffic noise levels impair perceived soundscape quality and restorativeness. • We recommend a limit of L day < 55 dB for traffic noise in recreational green spaces.