Older Adults’ Health in Nursing Homes and Therapeutic Environments: The Mediating Role of Psychological Recovery

Abstract

Secondary processes in hospitals are causing a major part of hospitals’ carbon footprint. At the same Population ageing has increased the need to improve nursing home environments that support older adults’ psychological recovery, restorative experience, and health. Although therapeutic landscapes have been widely linked to well-being, limited research has explained how nursing home landscapes influence older adults through psychological mechanisms in long-term care settings. This study examines how therapeutic landscapes influence psychological recovery, restorative experience, and health among older adults in nursing homes. Psychological recovery is positioned as the main mediating mechanism tested in this study, while other psychological and social processes are acknowledged as potential pathways for future research. Data were collected from 385 residents in two nursing homes in Haikou, China, and analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results show that therapeutic landscapes positively influenced all three outcomes. Psychological recovery also mediated the relationships between therapeutic landscapes and both restorative experience and health. Gender moderated the therapeutic landscape–restorative experience path and the psychological recovery–health path. The conditional indirect effects indicated that psychological recovery mediated the relationship between therapeutic landscapes and health more strongly for male residents than for female residents. This study identifies psychological recovery as a key mechanism and highlights the need for gender-sensitive nursing home landscape design.

Keywords: Therapeutic Landscape; Restorative Experience; Psychological Recovery; Health; Nursing Homes; Older Adults; Gender Moderation