IMIS

A pilot picture-rating experiment was developed. The Belgian coast was scanned and combinations of different coastal landscapes and attributes were photographed by the researchers. Employees and students of the Flanders Marine Institute were invited on appointm ent in the summer of 2019 to watch a selection of 112 pictures from the larger set and to fill in a short version of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (with items fascination, being away, and extent to be answered on a scale from 0 to 10). Each participant also completed a questionnaire about demography, residential proximity to the coast, and health (burnout assessment tool). The data was analysed via explorative boxplots, correlations, and ANOVA models. The data resulted in five lessons learned from this pilot-study: (1) more natural coastal environments seem to result in a higher perceived restorativeness; (2) the presence of plastic, cars, buildings, and other anthropogenic attributes seem to reduce the perceived restorativeness of these environments; (3) the age, sex, and wage seem to influence the ratings and should be accounted for in the analyses in future research along with standardly used covariates (e.g. smoking status); (4) mental health and residential proximity to t he coast should be considered as essential moderating factors during the analyses in future research; (5) the overall restorativeness and being away seem to be most reactive to different coastal environments. The data from this pilot-study can help researchers to finetune their methods with regard to developing a valid picture set and relevant items of perceived restorativeness, and to query important covariates and moderating factors in a background questionnaire.