The role of nature in promoting both affective and cognitive benefits has been extensively studied in the field of environmental psychology. Two well-established theories, Stress Recovery Theory (SRT) and Attention Restoration Theory (ART), are commonly used to explain these restorative benefits. However, despite their popularity, both theories face important challenges. To address these challenges, in the current paper, we propose an alternative goal-discrepancy account of restorative nature experiences. In our account, we consider individuals as goal-directed agents and argue that the to-be-restored states that are central to SRT and ART – stress and negative affect (in SRT) and declines in cognitive performance (in ART) – can be interpreted as discrepancies between an individual’s goals and their current situation, instead of drained affective and/or cognitive resources. We propose that affective (see SRT) and cognitive nature benefits (see ART) both arise from a process of discrepancy reduction, where nature helps individuals to reduce discrepancies between their current situation and their goals. Nature can facilitate this discrepancy reduction process through three pathways: (a) by modifying goals (i.e., accommodation), (b) by modifying interpretations of the situation (i.e., immunization), or (c) by affording actions that can fulfill thwarted goals (i.e., assimilation). We compare our account to SRT and ART, highlighting similarities and differences between our proposal and the two theories, and illustrate how it can guide empirical studies and real-life interventions.

自然在促进情感和认知益处方面的作用已在环境心理学领域得到广泛研究。压力恢复理论（SRT）和注意力恢复理论（ART）这两种成熟的理论通常用于解释这些恢复益处。然而，尽管这两种理论很受欢迎，但这两种理论都面临着重要的挑战。为了应对这些挑战，在本文中，我们提出了恢复性自然体验的替代目标差异解释。在我们的研究中，我们将个人视为目标导向的主体，并认为对 SRT 和 ART 至关重要的待恢复状态——压力和负面影响（在 SRT 中）以及认知表现下降（在 ART 中）——可以通过解释为个人目标与当前状况之间的差异，而不是情感和/或认知资源的耗尽。我们认为，情感（参见 SRT）和认知自然益处（参见 ART）都源于减少差异的过程，其中自然帮助个人减少当前状况与目标之间的差异。大自然可以通过三种途径促进这种差异减少过程：（a）通过修改目标（即住宿），（b）通过修改对情况的解释（即免疫），或（c）通过提供可以实现受阻目标的行动（即同化）。我们将我们的解释与 SRT 和 ART 进行比较，强调我们的建议与这两种理论之间的异同，并说明它如何指导实证研究和现实生活干预。