Abstract
Promoting people-nature relationships is essential for the effective adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in cities. Across scientific domains, the potential of eXtended Reality (XR) technologies as a novel tool to support and enable people-nature relationships is increasingly highlighted. However, the application of XR in urban NBS planning remains uncertain. Through a scoping review of the literature, we found five major application areas for employing XR in the context of people-nature relationships: perception and preference assessment, spatial planning and design, education and awareness enhancement, psychological intervention, and monitoring and maintenance. In this paper, we examine how nature’s instrumental, relational, and intrinsic values are communicated through XR and explore the potential role that XR technologies can play in promoting people-nature relationships. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of adopting XR technologies for urban NBS planning.
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Introduction
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are cost-effective innovative solutions that promote nature and natural processes and simultaneously address multiple social, economic, and environmental challenges1. Successful uptake and implementation of NBS will facilitate better people-nature relationships in cities2 and at the same time require improving the people-nature relationships3. Building this relationship requires focusing beyond just instrumental values, but toward recognizing and promoting plural values of nature4 for moving towards more just transformative changes5.
People understand and relate to nature and its values in diverse ways4. Here, we focus on the ways in which the importance of nature and its contribution to people are recognized in specific contexts, referred to as “specific values,” which consist of: instrumental, intrinsic, and relational values5. Instrumental and intrinsic values are two well-established types of nature’s values. Instrumental values refer to the values of nature as a means to human ends6. These are the most studied values of nature and are strongly connected to ecosystem services (the benefits humans get from healthy ecosystems). Intrinsic values of nature, as opposed to instrumental values, refer to values of nature as an end in itself6. The dichotomy between these two types of values has been under critical debate in environmental literature7. Chan et al.8 argued that people need to look beyond merely these two perspectives and consider how they relate to nature. Relational values refer to the values of meaningful relationships between people and nature and among people through nature8.
These diverse values people have towards nature need to be included in NBS planning and policy to ensure effective and just urban sustainability transitions9. However, including the values in NBS planning practice remains a challenge5. Addressing this challenge requires innovative solutions to recognize and capture the plural values of nature. Information systems provide a solution for facilitating people’s engagement with nature, for example, through games, educational applications, or citizen science platforms10.
The technology–nature relationship can be generally categorized into technology in green and technology for green11. Information systems in NBS consist of systems including various sensors and remote sensing technologies used for measuring the health and performance of NBS. Concepts like the Internet of Trees12 and Internet of Nature13 are related to this category of technologies in NBS. These technologies have the potential to enable efficient and effective ecosystem management and planning, and maintenance of NBS. Information systems for NBS refer to systems outside and beyond NBS, enabling the widespread uptake, implementation, and impact of NBS11. These information systems are applied for various purposes, including facilitating NBS collaborative planning14,15, providing insights into the synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services16, enabling knowledge transfer across experiences17, and maintaining and monitoring NBS15,18. Information systems for NBS can also allow a wide range of stakeholders to get engaged with the process of imagining, designing, planning, monitoring, and efficiently maintaining NBS. Importantly, integrating virtual platforms and tools within urban landscape planning can provide a setting to co-produce knowledge about NBS planning in cities19, which is critical for their mainstreaming20.
eXtended Reality (XR) technologies are a group of information systems that have shown promising results in mediating people-nature relationships21. XR technologies, by blending reality with a digital world, provide immersive experiences that enhance perception, interaction, and creativity22. XR has been used as an umbrella concept referring to a spectrum of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), with X referring to the unknown variable: xReality23. The development of XR technologies has facilitated their adoption in society and for various purposes such as medical applications24, agriculture25, manufacturing training26, construction industry27, and education28.
VR applications immerse the user in a computer-simulated 3D environment that can be similar to, or different from, the real world. VR applications mostly use Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) to provide an immersive experience of presence in a different environment and enable interaction with the virtual world. VR applications using the motion sensors in HMD and tracking users’ movements provide a responsive virtual experience, enhancing the sense of presence. On the other hand, AR integrates digital objects into the user’s perception of reality by superimposing virtual objects onto the real world. In AR, users see and interact with virtual objects mostly through a device like a phone or tablet with a low level of immersion. MR lies somewhere between VR and AR. In MR, users interact with virtual objects while they are aware of their surroundings. MR integrates virtual objects into users’ worlds. It allows the virtual content to interact with the real world29. There are fewer MR products available compared to VR and AR, and MR is less applied compared to the other two technologies.
XR technologies provide a unique opportunity for intuitive and dynamic interaction with nature through a novel way to experience reality30. Many studies have been conducted in the context of the people-nature relationships using XR technologies, as shown in review studies by Cosio et al.31 and Webber et al.10. However, there is a gap in understanding how XR can be adopted in the context of urban NBS planning to promote people-nature relationships. This paper addresses this gap by conducting a scoping review of the literature on the application of XR technologies in the context of people-nature relationships in urban settings. It maps the objectives for applying these technologies and nature’s values that are communicated through them.
Results
In this study, we reviewed 54 articles, all published since 2018. Notably, 35 of these were published from 2022 onwards, highlighting the recent surge in interest and the novelty of this research area (Fig. 1).
There is an increasing number of studies employing XR technologies in the context of urban NBS.
The review revealed that there are five major application areas of XR in the context of people-nature relationships in cities, they are: 1—Perception and preference assessment, 2—Spatial planning and design, 3—Education and awareness enhancement, 4—Psychological intervention, and 5—Monitoring and maintenance. These five categories have been identified based on a thematic analysis of the objectives for applying XR in the reviewed studies. Table 1 presents the number of studies that used XR for each of the five application areas, respectively.
Application of XR in the context of people-nature relationships
Various XR technologies have been adopted to support each of the five application areas. Figure 2 illustrates the frequency of VR, AR, and MR usage across these areas.
Most studies utilized VR technology, primarily for perception and preference assessments. The frequency of using various XR technologies for each application area is depicted by the width of the connecting lines.
Findings show that XR technologies, specifically VR, are most frequently applied for perception and preference assessment. In these studies, VR is primarily used to compare the perception and preferences towards various landscape design scenarios, characteristics of green spaces, and the benefits they provide. For example, immersive VR has been used to evaluate the effect of green space enclosure32 or hedge height33 on perceived safety. This group of studies demonstrated that immersive VR could improve people’s ability to make judgements regarding the values of urban greenery compared to non-immersive approaches34,35,36. In addition, multiple studies employed VR and electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG), or photoplethysmographic (PPG) technologies to study people’s preferences regarding different environments and characteristics of green spaces, showing that exposure to nature through VR can cause measurable differences in physiological measures37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44. Jaalama et al.45 and Gao et al.46 argued that VR could act as a replacement for in-situ assessment of perception towards NBS, especially when in-situ assessment is costly.
Among the reviewed publications, only one study applied immersive XR for (real-time) interactive spatial planning and design of urban NBS. It should be noted that many preference assessment studies used XR to support and inform the planning process; however, these XR experiences did not provide the opportunity for people’s active engagement in spatial planning and design. This requires going beyond just visualization towards enabling users to interact with virtual objects. Dan et al.47 provided a platform that uses MR technology to enable real-time on-site design. They demonstrated the ability of their platform to design an urban community park and place street furniture. They argued that their model provides realistic depth perception for designers and enables them to better perceive their environment from various viewpoints. It allows interaction with the 3D objects, collision, and occlusion between the virtual objects and the real environment, enabling a more accurate design experience.
XR technologies, considering their ability to provide a setting for education and awareness enhancement and interaction with the learning material, provide a unique opportunity for learning purposes. The application of AR for education has been demonstrated by Pombo et al.48 and Pristouris et al.49. Pombo et al.48 presented the EduPark game that promotes learning in urban parks by combining AR with outdoor gaming strategies. They found the game to be an effective tool to boost learning. Pristouris et al.49 presented an AR mobile application for urban park touring and management to enhance environmental awareness. These studies showed that AR provides a novel setting for education about nature and raises awareness by allowing a deeper interaction with information. It enables outdoor learning, connecting with nature, and understanding the complexities of nature and its various values. Parikh et al.50 showed that VR experiences can also offer a learning environment within urban NBS contexts. They introduced a prototype for peer-to-peer information exchange in urban farming by enabling users to discover urban farms and engage with others.
Another group of studies demonstrated the application of simulated nature in VR for psychological interventions. These studies showed that being exposed to virtual nature can enhance the curiosity to explore natural environments51, cause psychological arousal52, reduce stress53, and provide restorative benefits54,55,56. Studies included in this category showed that VR can be directly used as the setting to promote the emotional and health benefits of exposure to virtual nature. Calogiuri et al.51 found that exposure to nature through VR can promote exercise in natural settings by producing anticipated emotional benefits from being exposed to nature and nostalgic reconsumption of places. In a comparison between exposure to physical nature versus virtual nature, Reese et al.52 and Yen et al.54 found that virtual nature can provide similar mental health benefits to physical nature. These studies suggest that a virtual walk in nature can be a suitable alternative when a real nature walk is difficult.
Studies addressing the monitoring and maintenance of urban NBS showed that XR technologies, particularly AR, can provide a setting to facilitate monitoring the state of NBS and planning for maintenance. Two studies used AR for the purpose of monitoring and maintenance of urban NBS. Xing et al.57 applied AR to develop a method for the construction of large-scale plant datasets used for plant growth state detection. They suggested this method as a suitable approach for developing deep learning models for plant growth detection. In another study, Wu et al.58 used AR in the context of an app (ARTreeWatch) which is designed to measure individual tree height and diameter. They found this approach to be an efficient and accurate way to measure the structural parameters of trees in urban settings. It can serve as an alternative to construct databases needed for developing instance deep learning models for tree structural measurements.
XR for communicating nature’s plural values
We analyzed the reviewed publications to identify the specific values of nature that have been communicated through XR applications. Since these values are often not directly mentioned in the reviewed papers, we examined the communicated values of nature and assigned them to the three values proposed by IPBES4 based on their definitions: instrumental, intrinsic, and relational values.
Instrumental values are the most frequently communicated values of nature among the reviewed studies. In these studies, humans are considered as the recipients of certain services provided by nature. A frequently explored service has been the restorative quality of nature. Several studies used XR to evaluate the impact of different types and forms of nature or design characteristics on stress recovery, emotions, and human well-being37,46,51,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68. For example, Piga et al.69 connected emotional reactions while visiting NBS to color tones. They found that, in general, the presence of green and lime color tones reduces the unpleasantness in the urban environment. However, according to Wang et al.70, personality traits can significantly affect stress reduction by exposure to virtual nature. They found that people with lower neuroticism and higher extraversion experience better stress reduction when viewing VR images of urban forests. For a multi-sensory communication of instrumental values, multiple studies used audio-visual stimuli to evaluate the noise reduction services71,72,73,74, restorativeness32,60,75, and audio-visual satisfaction76,77. Schebella et al.78 used olfactory stimulation to evaluate the impact of biodiversity on human stress recovery in addition to visual and audio stimuli. These studies showed that a multi-sensory virtual nature experience can enable communication of a wider range of instrumental values, but also provides a more comprehensive perception of the values.
There were not many studies directly focusing on intrinsic values. However, we found some examples showing the potential of XR applications to support communicating intrinsic values. The most commonly communicated intrinsic value is the esthetic value of nature46,79,80,81,82,83. For example, Jeon et al.82 showed that people can communicate a sense of beauty when looking at different urban and natural environments. Moreover, VR seems to be capable of representing the species richness and naturalness of spaces36,84, as well as the biophysical features of nature57, which could be used to communicate intrinsic values.
In the reviewed studies, relational values were mainly communicated by enabling people to recognize and experience interaction with nature or with others in the context of nature. The results showed that (location-based) AR applications are particularly successful in communicating relational values, for example, through encouraging collaboration in monitoring the health status of plants57,58. There are also multiple studies that used VR to communicate relational values. Sacchelli and Favaro85 using audio-visual stimuli, showed that VR can be used to communicate cultural ecosystem services. They found that people’s willingness to visit urban forests is enhanced by the prevalence of people-related and natural sounds. Similarly, Jo and Jeon86, by using audio-visual stimuli, showed that VR can communicate the experience of social interactions in the context of urban nature. They found that a higher number of people in a park results in more active social interactions. Parikh et al.50 used VR to communicate relational values in the context of urban farms by activating peer-to-peer learning, interactions, and information sharing in the context of urban agriculture. VR can also help to communicate the sense of attachment to urban parks. Bazrafshan et al.79, in an experiment using virtual park visits with locals and bi-cultural migrants, found that people have a higher sense of attachment to urban parks that they have cultural familiarity with. In another study, Calogiuri et al.51 used virtual walks in green spaces and found that virtual nature can enable people to develop a personal interpretation of green spaces associated with a sense of nostalgia towards the locations.
Insights from expert interviews
The first aspect of XR that can be used to help communicate nature’s values is the ability it provides users to see the world from the perspective of other groups and species. XR can enable us to “embody other species” (i.2). Several examples of embodying other species, such as lobsters, insects, ants, and trees, were mentioned by the experts interviewed. XR provides the chance to take the perspective of others by giving us a sense of “withness”21. Spangenberger et al.87, in an experiment using immersive VR, showed that embodying a tree initiates a reflective process regarding people-nature relationships. XR can also help “embody not just yourself today but your future self” (i.2). It enables imagining scenarios that are otherwise difficult to comprehend without a visual approach to communicating. VR embodiment has been frequently recognized to promote pro-social behavior and improve attitudes towards others88,89. Immersive VR can potentially enable people to adopt alternative perspectives and develop a sense of empathy90. In addition, XR allows “you to create a memory” (i.2), which may cause a change in behavior and perception of spaces in real life. Moreover, experts pointed out that interactive XR experiences allow people to feel capable of making a change, enhancing their sense of agency. A higher sense of agency could motivate people to participate in nature-positive actions91. Building a sense of agency was particularly emphasized in the context of game-based XR applications. “Agency is the core aspect of games” (i.4). Games can enable us to communicate and expose ourselves to different modes of agency92.
The other element that can make XR a suitable setting for promoting people-nature relationships is its ability to enable people to better perceive and connect to slower natural processes and changes. For example, XR can be used to allow people to experience the process of the growth of a tree87. With XR “you can speed things up” (i.2). XR allows us to have access to “accelerated futures” (i.3). For example, The Stanford Ocean Acidification Experience shows the ability of XR to speed up changes in ecosystems to provide a perception of the future causing a sense of empathy towards non-humans93. This is related to the concept of psychological distance, including spatial, temporal, hypothetical, and social distance94. The XR’s ability to reduce psychological distance95,96 may be suitable for communicating relational values. Reducing psychological distance to nature could enhance nature connectedness97,98.
Discussion
The scoping review revealed that XR may be able to support people-nature relationships by providing a more active and experiential setting that allows the values and emotions of people about nature to be communicated. There is merit in the XR applications for more experiential and place-based understandings of different scenarios of urban NBS and how they affect people-nature relationships expressed as instrumental, intrinsic, and relational values.
Looking at the results of the review, there is a connection between the objective of XR applications and nature’s values that are communicated through XR (Fig. 3). The most common objective of XR applications in the context of people-nature relationships is perception and preference assessment. These studies show that XR can be used to evaluate people’s preferences, mainly regarding the instrumental values of nature.
Different values of nature are communicated across application areas of XR technologies in the context of urban NBS. XR applications for monitoring and maintenance mostly communicate the instrumental values, while the ones used for psychological interventions communicate the relational, but also intrinsic values of nature. XR applications used for perception and preference assessment mostly communicate the instrumental but also the intrinsic values. Applications used for education and awareness enhancement are capable of communicating the relational values, and the ones used for spatial planning and design seem to be able to communicate the instrumental and relational values of nature.
Place-specific XR experiences in which people interact with real nature, mainly using location-based AR technology, seem to be particularly successful in communicating relational values. This may be due to developing a sense of attachment towards nature99, as place-specific XR experiences do not separate people from real nature but can enrich people’s experience of nature. Such applications are commonly developed for the purpose of education and awareness enhancement. Similarly, XR experiences designed for collaborative spatial planning and design seem to be capable of promoting relational values in addition to the instrumental values of nature.
Intrinsic values are independent of human valuers, which might be a reason that they are not commonly communicated through XR nature experiences, as it is a medium developed and used by humans to interact with nature in new ways. XR seems to be capable of communicating intrinsic values in less direct manners, for example, by communicating esthetic values.
Considering the findings of the review, we propose five major areas where XR can provide added value in the context of urban NBS planning: (1) Unlocking the imagination (2) Experiential learning (3) Eco-agency and stewardship (4) Place-based planning and design, and (5) (Collaborative) monitoring and citizen science.
Enabling people to (re)imagine a future where NBS is integrated within the urban fabric is essential to NBS co-creation100. XR technologies allow people with different backgrounds and types of knowledge to engage in imagining the future and experience a sense of presence by interacting with nature. This can enable better recognition of different values and preferences in NBS planning. By promoting a sense of “withness,” XR could enable people to perceive and experience a future in which humans live in harmony with nature and motivate people to take stronger actions towards mainstreaming NBS.
Considering the innovativeness and complexities associated with NBS, learning-by-doing is a central strategy for successful NBS adoption101. XR could enhance the learning experience10. Some forms of learning, especially the ones that could be communicated through audio-visual stimuli, for example, making observations of trees or plants, and identifying and learning about them, could be effectively implemented through XR102,103. Using location-based AR for this purpose seems to be suitable to enable learning in space, which could help improve the learning process.
Ecosystem stewardship facilitates the monitoring, management, and upscaling of NBS by encouraging people to get involved104. An important motivation for engagement in ecosystem stewardship is the sense of place, memory, and meaning105,106. Immersive XR applications create a sense of presence that allows people to reconnect with nature107. By inducing a sense of attachment and positive emotional reactions towards nature, XR nature experiences may be able to motivate ecosystem stewardship.
NBS planning needs to be place-based and to consider the local conditions such that it matches the local socio-spatial context108. XR technologies allow for looking at the urban spaces from various angles, visualizing various designs in an interactive setting22, experiencing scenarios by different groups of people, and identifying spatial opportunities that help to better integrate NBS within its surrounding109. By facilitating the engagement of people in place-based design, XR could promote nature’s relational values.
Citizen science and collaborative monitoring are increasingly promoted as effective approaches to mapping110, monitoring, and management of NBS111, and improving the people–nature relationships112. XR technologies, especially AR and MR applications, can provide a novel setting to interact with urban spaces and NBS, which can promote data collection, knowledge co-production, and dissemination by different groups of people.
There are also limitations and risks associated with applying XR in the context of people-nature relationships. Limited access to XR equipment and digital literacy could limit the adoption of these technologies by certain groups, leading to a digital divide. In addition, people with certain conditions, including visually impaired people, may feel discomfort while exposed to XR experiences. XR experiences may be able to induce emotional reactions in people, but there is little experience or evidence on incorporating insights from the emotions of non-humans21. Moreover, engaging with virtual nature may inhibit the development of meaningful connections with nature through sensorially rich and culturally situated nature experiences that are necessary for developing a sense of attachment10. XR experiences could be culturally biased depending on who is designing them. They mostly do not include different ways of knowing, especially indigenous knowledge, which is necessary for inclusive design113. However, there are several examples of including the Indigenous perspective in designing VR experiences as documented in Fourth VR (https://fourthvr.com/). These examples can serve as valuable references for creating more inclusive XR experiences.
Methods
Scoping review
We conducted a scoping review to identify core objectives for applying XR technologies in the context of NBS in urban settings, and the values of nature that could be communicated through XR. The scoping review is intended to identify gaps and summarize findings and conclusions from the literature114,115. Drawing on the methodology provided by Levac et al.116 we conducted the scoping review in five steps (see Fig. 4): (1) identifying the research question, (2) identifying relevant studies (3) study selection (4) charting the data, and (5) collating, summarizing and reporting results.
This study followed the scoping review process provided by Levac et al.116.
Our guiding research questions are “What are the objectives for applying XR in the context of urban NBS?” and “What are the values of nature that could be communicated through XR?” Considering these questions, we utilized search terms that cover the spectrum of XR technologies and urban NBS. The search terms included: ((“extended reality” OR “virtual reality” OR “augmented reality” OR “mixed reality”) AND (“green*” OR “park” OR “forest*” OR “green infrastructure” OR “blue infrastructure” OR “nature-based” OR “urban landscape” OR “ecosystem based” OR “ecosystem services”) AND (urban OR city OR cities)). We used the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus as two extensive databases including high-quality research to search for relevant papers. The search was conducted on September 4, 2024, and led to the identification of 289 publications in WoS and 243 publications in Scopus. After removing the 145 duplicates, the non-English and non-original research articles, 340 publications were selected. In the next step, we reviewed the title and abstract of the articles and excluded non-empirical papers, studies that do not actively use XR technologies to interact with urban NBS (e.g., focused on the 3D modeling methods), and studies employing non-immersive technologies. We also excluded studies focusing on individuals with specific conditions to ensure the results are applicable to the general population. Finally, 54 studies were included for review.
Expert interviews
Considering the review results, we engaged with five experts to discuss the challenges and visions for using XR to communicate nature’s instrumental, intrinsic, and relational values. These experts were chosen based on their extensive experience in developing and researching XR applications for interacting with nature and applying XR technologies in practice with diverse stakeholders. Our goal in conducting these interviews was to determine if the XR application areas in the context of urban NBS identified in the literature review align with the experts’ experiences. Additionally, we aimed to provide a deeper elaboration on the findings to better understand the implications of XR technology for urban NBS planning.
Data availability
The data that support the findings of the scoping review are available in the Supplementary Information of this article.
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S.S. discloses support for the research of this work from Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene (NATURA) project.
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S.S. developed the conceptual approach and drafted the manuscript. T.M., B.T., and N.F. contributed to the development of the discussion section and revised the manuscript.
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Sarabi, S., McPhearson, T., Tunçer, B. et al. eXtended Reality for promoting people-nature relationships in cities: a scoping review. npj Urban Sustain 5, 51 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-025-00240-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-025-00240-w
