Strengths and limitations
HMD
PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS
This study is among the few studies on biophilic design in a virtually built environment and has several strengths. Firstly, we framed the study in the context of Metaverse by investigating the health effects of biophilic design in the virtual world, where people would probably spend most of their time in the future. Secondly, the verbal cognitive tests minimized the potential visual interferences caused by questions showing on the virtual screen in the VR goggle. Additionally, the insignificant changes in the physiological stress indicators and the significant drop in the self-reported stress levels indicates an interesting gap between the objective assessments and subjective feelings of one’s stress. Fourthly, the study used a head-mounted display (HMD) with a three-dimensional environment, offering a more immersive experience for participants than two-dimensional pictures [The study also has some limitations. Firstly, given the small effect sizes (There are several recommendations for further metaverse-related environmental design study. Besides the randomization, immersive experience, and larger sample size, the simulated environment should have high quality that would put participants in a continuous vivid setting. In terms of immersive experience, studies found that interactivity might play a significant role in the restorative impact of natural environments in VR, and engaging in playful interactions could help managing short-term stress [