Effects of Sound Source Landscape in Urban Forest Park on Alleviating Mental Stress of Visitors: Evidence from Huolu Mountain Forest Park, Guangzhou

Abstract

Urban Forest parks are indispensable areas in cities and have ecological and social advantages, and the quality of their acoustic landscapes is an important factor influencing visitors’ visiting experience. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors influencing the acoustic landscape on psychological stress relief in selected urban forest parks in China. This study used a questionnaire to construct an index system for psychological stress reduction and designed a questionnaire for the perceived impact of stress-reducing acoustic sources with user perception and stress-reducing restoration evaluation as the entry point. The research team conducted field research and online questionnaire survey on the questionnaire.com platform from 1–5 July 2022, in Huolu Mountain Forest Park, an urban forest park in Guangzhou, and collected 266 valid questionnaires. SPSS26.0 was used to analyze the results of the impact of the urban forest park on users’ psychological stress relief. Spearman’s rho correlation analysis and a Kruskal–Wallis nonparametric test were used to reveal the relationship between social, demographic and behavioral factors of tourism and sound source perception, and multiple regression analysis was used to identify the key factors of urban forest park. The results showed that, first, there were significant individual differences and correlations between respondents’ age, education level, visit time and frequency on soundscape perceptions; the older the respondent or the higher the education level, the higher the psychological stress relief evaluation of natural sounds such as birdsong in urban forest parks; the more frequent the visit, the more sensitive the users were to sound source perceptions; and the different visit time periods showed that, when the frequency of the visit was higher, the more sensitive the users were to the sound source. Secondly, natural sounds are important factors for psychological stress relief in soundscape, and natural sounds such as birdsong, cicadas, flowing water, and the sound of breeze blowing leaves have positive benefits and significant contributions to psychological stress relief. Third, the overall restorative evaluation of soundscape perception and the separate evaluation of natural, mechanical, and human-made sounds had significant effects, and the overall restorative evaluation showed that the cumulative contribution value of attractiveness was greater than that of compatibility and consistency. Fourth, soundscape plays a role in psychological stress relief, as evidenced by significant differences in pleasure and arousal levels but not in control.