Small Garden,Big Impact: Emotional and Behavioral Responses of Visitors to a Rooftop Atrium in a Major Hospital

Abstract

Purpose:

To measure hospital visitors’ satisfaction with a rooftop atrium and its resultant impact on the visitors’ behavioral intentions toward the healing garden, the hospital, and overall satisfaction with the hospital.

Background:

There is a significant lack of empirical research that links the emotional and behavioral responses toward healing gardens and the hospitals providing them.

Methods:

A purposeful sample of 96 visitors to the healing garden in the rooftop atrium of a surgery building in a major hospital in the Southeastern United States completed a survey based on Roger Ulrich’s Theory of Supportive Gardens and the Stimulus, Organism, Response (S-O-R) paradigm.

Results:

Findings of this study suggest visitors’ experience with the healing garden can lead to overall satisfaction with the hospital and behavioral intentions toward the hospital. Visitors’ satisfaction with the healing garden significantly predicted their satisfaction with the hospital, their intend to revisit the hospital, and their intend to recommend it.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrates that a small healing garden can be a powerful enough space to impact visitors’ overall satisfaction with the hospital and their intentions regarding their future behavior toward the hospital, such as revisiting or recommending the hospital.