Good for Business, Too
Although making yourself and others feel good is a great motivator for adding more plants or trees to your environment, here’s another motivator that’ll get even the most hardened of business managers heading to the garden center: Plants can increase customer spending in stores, and they can also reduce staff absenteeism.
Professor Tove Fjeld and her colleagues at Radium Hospital in Oslo, Norway, spent five years analyzing the effects of plants on patients’ and staff well-being. They looked at absenteeism due to minor health problems and found that after plants and full-spectrum lighting were introduced, these sick days dropped from 15 percent to 5.6 percent — and this figure remained low throughout the five years. In one of Fjeld’s other studies, this one in a Norwegian bank, these results were replicated, with an average 10 percent reduction in staff illnesses.
Interestingly, people’s perception of a business also improves when there are trees or plants added to an environment. Like a man bearing flowers, businesses with planted trees, shrubs or other greenery are more likely to serve the customer well. Dr. Kathleen Wolf, who works in the College of the Environment at the University of Washington, analyzed the relationship between planting of trees or greenery outside stores and customers’ perception of the stores themselves. “Some shopping is about utility — that is, finding the goods and the services we need,” says Wolf. “But a lot of shopping is also discretionary, and having a positive experience is conducive to people enjoying a place long enough to spend time there, thus money, and even returning for future shopping trips.”
Trees, it seems, would be a great way to encourage more customer flow and bigger spending, too. “We found that a quality tree canopy and landscape in the streetscape extends the shop’s ‘red carpet’ out to the curb,” says Wolf. “When we surveyed customers, we found that a quality landscape around a store was associated with merchants being more helpful, and that product quality was better. Apparently the plants provide a first impression and are a cue to care. If a group of merchants cares enough to provide amenities in the streetscape, they are probably more attentive and helpful to their customers.”
How Do Plants Do This?
There are a number of factors at play. A Japanese study published in the journal Environmental Health and Preventive Medicine found that spending time in forests, in contrast to a built-up environment, has a number of physiological effects. Forest time reduces cerebral activity in the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain used for executive function — decision-making, choosing between one action and another or determining the outcome of an action.
Time spent in a forest environment also lowers sympathetic nerve activity, which in turn triggers certain physiological effects, including diverting blood flow from the digestion organs and skin to the lungs and heart, as well as increasing heart rate to improve oxygen flow to muscles. Green time was found to heighten parasympathetic nerve activity, which promotes a more restful physical state. Finally, it reduces salivary cortisol levels, the hormone produced in response to stress.
Being in nature may also simply be more natural to our brains, thereby making it easier to function within. “Many studies have shown that some structures and processes in the brain can be understood by reference to the signals our brain has to deal with on an everyday basis,” says neuropsychologist Constantin A. Rothkopf, of the Institute for Advanced Studies Goethe-University, Germany. “The structure of the natural environment, the structure imposed on the sensory input by our own sensory organs and the way we use our sensory organs all shape the stream of sensory signals our brain receives and has to operate with.”
Another factor to take into consideration is the effect trees and plants have on our environments by changing the air quality. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the air and replace it with oxygen. In a small enclosed space, it’s possible that even just one plant could have an effect on brain power by increasing the available oxygen in the air.
NASA has also found that plants are capable of removing toxic substances from the air. With a view to improving health and quality of life for astronauts in outer space, NASA researchers spent two years analyzing the effects of 19 different plants on toxins in the air and found that some are better at the job than others. Ivy, gerbera daisies, pot mums, peace lilies, bamboo palm and mother-in-law’s tongue were the most effective at remove such airborne toxins as benzene (from plastics or detergents) and formaldehyde (in carpeting). These toxins are associated with various illnesses, from cancer to asthma and headaches.
This article was originally published in the Summer 2011 issue of Brain World Magazine.
