, where the ball is thrown at a running person. For an environment to be considered restorative, it must not only support the specific activities, but also any inclinations of the individual. Therefore compatibility is “a function of environmental dictates and personal intentions” (Hartig et al. 1997b, 178). If the environment or elements of the environment are not, or are perceived to be not supportive of specific activities proposed, then the environment is not compatible (Kaplan 1983). If the component of Compatibility is met, environmental elements are supportive of and congruent with required behavior, and functions can be performed without difficulty or distraction, an important component of a restorative environment.
Restorative Component MeasuresAlthough the four components of restorative environments were initially proposed two decades ago (Kaplan 1983), the development of measures for these constructs has only recently been addressed and has focused on young adult samples. In 1997, Hartig and colleagues, continuing work initially published in 1991, conducted a series of studies in order to develop the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS) with varied success (Hartig et al. 1997b). Overall, their data yielded two factors: a General Restorativeness Factor and a Coherence Factor. They suggested further improvements were warranted to strengthen the measure, a point reiterated by Korpela et al. (2001) after finding a similar factor structure with favorite and unpleasant places. Hartig et al. (1997b) did, however, caution against a simplified model being pursued.
Development of a measure of the five restorative components was subsequently conducted by Laumann et al. (2001), with 22 items loading onto five factors. This measure will be referred to as the Restorative Components Scale (RCS) in keeping with Herzog et al. (2003). Interestingly, the a priori Being Away items split into two factors: a physical being away, novelty (e.g., I am in a different setting than usual) and a psychological being away, escape (e.g., I am away from my obligations). This empirical finding is in keeping with Kaplan’s original definitions of Being Away referring to either physical or psychological aspects. The other factors were as proposed by ART: Extent (e.g., the elements here go together), Fascination (e.g., this setting has many things that I wonder about) and Compatibility (e.g., I am capable of meeting the challenge of this setting).
Both these measures, however, have been developed for use with adult participants. The goal of this study was to develop and evaluate a measure of restorative components appropriate for the use with children. Consistent with Hartig et al.'s (1997b) goals, the measure for children should capture the components of ART, as well as differentiate environments that differ theoretically in their level of restorativeness. Therefore, two familiar, everyday environments were evaluated by each child in this study; that is, their school playground and their school library. These environments were compared to their school classroom. A school library is clearly more similar to the classroom (i.e., indoors, chairs and tables, used during class time, few natural elements) than the school playground (i.e., outdoors, play equipment, used during breaks, more natural elements) and therefore would theoretically be perceived as less restorative.
The decision to focus on children’s school environments is based on theoretical and social considerations. First, for an environment to be restorative it needs to be accessible (Kaplan 1995). Given the wide reaching changes in recent decades and, in turn, increased parental reluctance to permit children to play unsupervised, opportunities for children to be able to wander from home to local fields or parks have decreased (Kellert 2002). Second, a number of studies have indicated that children aged six through 12 more often spend time in nearby or familiar places rather than unusual or spectacular places (Moore 1986; Nabhan and Trimble 1994; Sobel 1990). Schoolyards may be one of the 