How Do Waterfront Concert Halls in China Enhance Residents’ Well-Being? The Chain Mediating Effects of Perceived Restorativeness and Place Attachment

The psychological benefits of waterfront public spaces have become an important topic in environmental design and architectural research. However, existing studies have primarily focused on the direct relationship between physical environmental attributes and user satisfaction, with limited attention to the psychological mechanisms through which architectural design influences residents’ well-being. This study examines waterfront concert halls as a type of cultural architectural space and develops a theoretical model integrating environmental restoration theory and place attachment theory. In this model, waterfront design perception is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct including water visibility, water accessibility, water harmony, and water interactivity, while perceived restorativeness and place attachment are treated as mediating variables, and residents’ well-being as the outcome variable. Based on questionnaire data collected from 1345 urban residents across six Chinese cities and seven waterfront concert hall cases, and analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling, the results show that waterfront design perception has a significant positive effect on residents’ well-being. Perceived restorativeness and place attachment both play mediating roles and jointly form a sequential pathway through which environmental perception is translated into psychological and emotional benefits. These findings extend the understanding of waterfront design from objective spatial attributes to subjective experiential processes and provide empirical support for the design of waterfront cultural architecture aimed at enhancing the well-being of urban residents.