How Does the Urban Forest Environment Affect the Psychological Restoration of Residents? A Natural Experiment in Environmental Perception from Beijing

The urban forest is not only an essential part of maintaining the security of the urban ecosystem but also an important restorative environmental site that benefits the physical and mental health of residents. In this research, a natural experiment was designed in Beijing in order to evaluate the urban forest environment in terms of visual, auditory, and olfactory senses, and the effects of psychosocial restoration in urban forest environments were tested. On this basis, a Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Model was structured to verify the “environment-perception-restoration mechanism”. The findings showed that the urban forest environment was the main cause of the differences in residents’ psychological restoration and the natural environment perception, while the natural environment perception directly impacted residents’ psychological restoration and mediated the relationship between the urban forest environment and psychological restoration. Therefore, Beijing needs to further optimize the landscape, sound, smell, and other environmental elements of urban forests and create a peaceful and spacious urban forest open space, considering the environmental perception preferences of urban residents, to improve the psychological restoration effect of urban forests.