Birdsong and Green Space Reduce Student Stress

Mental health has been deteriorating on university campuses for years. By 2020, nearly 60 percent of students said they were experiencing some form of mental health difficulty, with the pandemic intensifying that pressure.

Spending time in nature is among the few measures repeatedly shown to help. Even brief exposure can reduce stress, improve mood and restore the concentration drained by everyday demands.

Two established theories offer an explanation. One suggests natural environments reduce stress by soothing the body, while the other proposes that they replenish depleted attention by gently directing the mind beyond itself.

A recent experiment sought to untangle two elements that normally occur together outdoors. It posed a more precise question: for mental wellbeing, does the setting itself matter more, or do the sounds within it?

A growing need for calm

The research was led by Nils Peterson, a professor at North Carolina State University (NC State). His team aimed to establish how much of nature’s benefit is linked to what people see, compared with what they hear.

The issue is particularly important in cities. Built-up areas often have little green space, so identifying the most effective element could help direct limited funding.

Birdwatching offered the researchers a useful way to explore this. It is inexpensive, requires no specialist ability, and its most basic element-birdsong-can reach areas where trees cannot.

Birds are well suited to that role. They inhabit cities as readily as forests, meaning their songs can be heard by almost anyone nearby, including people on a concrete plaza.

Testing birdsong and stress

The study design was deliberately straightforward. All 106 students spent time at two sharply contrasting locations on the Raleigh campus.

One location was a restored section of riverside woodland beside Rocky Branch, a waterway redesigned and replanted between 2002 and 2006. The other was a bleak plaza outside a busy student union, surrounded by roads and buildings.

At both locations, participants sat on folding chairs and wore noise-cancelling headphones.

The headphones played either 10 minutes of birdsong recorded in a Florida marsh or 10 minutes of traffic noise recorded at a busy junction in Paris.

The sequence of settings and sounds was randomised for each participant. This enabled the researchers to distinguish the influence of the scenery from that of the audio.

When birdsong outperformed traffic

Following every session, the students assessed their stress levels and emotions. They also scored how restored they felt-that is, the extent to which the location appeared to refresh their minds and relieve strain.

The findings showed a clear pattern. Woodland combined with birdsong created the most positive mood, the lowest stress and the strongest feeling of restoration.

“For participants who were in a green space listening to the birds, there were significant effects,” Peterson said.

“Positive emotions went up, negative emotions went down, stress went down, and perceptions of feeling restored went up more than any other combination.”

“On the other hand, you had the complete opposite when participants in a gray, urban area listened to the sounds of cars, and more mixed reactions when the sounds and areas were mismatched.”

Why the forest had greater impact

Both components made an independent contribution. The mismatched conditions-birdsong in the grey plaza or traffic amid the trees-fell squarely between the two extremes.

For stress and immediate emotional responses, sound and surroundings were roughly equally important. Birdsong reduced stress whether students were seated among trees or looking at concrete.

Restoration produced a somewhat different result. The sense of mental refreshment relied more heavily on the forest than on birdsong, although both improved it.

The questionnaire itself may partly explain this. Its questions repeatedly referred to “place”, which may have focused participants more on their visual surroundings than on the sounds entering their ears.

Even small green spaces can help

This woodland was not an ancient wilderness. It was a relatively small area of restored forest set within a university campus.

That detail is significant. A restored strip of woodland, only two decades old, produced the soothing effect that researchers more commonly associate with mature forests.

Peterson believes the findings offer a practical message for harsh urban spaces. An uninviting plaza may be improved without demolishing or rebuilding it.

“When you have a really gray space that is going to stress people out and give them negative experiences, if you can change that space so that it has natural sounds, you can ameliorate the downsides of that gray space,” Peterson said.

“In our research we have evidence for bird sounds, but there is also a lot of literature supporting the use of water sounds and other things in nature.”

Birdsong can provide stress relief

The experiment highlights a reassuringly low-cost approach. The students did not need anything from birdlife beyond its sound.

There were no binoculars, field guides or lengthy walks into woodland. Students simply needed 10 minutes sitting on a bench.

The woodland itself was small and embedded in an active urban campus. This suggests that a carefully positioned seat and view in a city park could offer similar benefits.

That accessibility is the central promise of the research. A recording and several trees could provide a small measure of calm on a stressful city street.

Bringing nature to more people

The key challenge is equity. Green, bird-filled areas are more often found in affluent neighbourhoods, meaning the mental health benefits may bypass those with the greatest need.

Students especially may not have access to conventional mental health services. An easily available dose of nearby nature could support some people in ways that clinics cannot.

Restoring both trees and the birds that depend on them could extend those benefits more broadly. Just 10 minutes and some birdsong demanded very little from the students who left feeling better.