The Real Christmas Tree Board

A recent CNN article proposed that real Christmas trees (and greenspaces and nature in general) provide important health benefits such as the reduction in anxiety, psychological stress, and depression. The Mayo Clinic recognizes that many people experience stress around the holidays, so their recommendation to restore inner calm may be even more important during Christmas. Despite the plethora of literature that identifies the health benefits of nature, very little research examined the phenomena in detail as it relates to Christmas tree shopping. The purpose of the nationwide online survey (n=1,208, 45 questions, and 2 video evaluations) is to examine the extent to which Christmas tree shopping environments that include real trees in the outdoors (i.e., choose and cut farm, garden centers, Boy Scout lot, and home improvement store) provide opportunities for the recovery from mental and attentional fatigue when compared to artificial trees indoors (i.e., variety of store displays). Researchers at West Virginia University helped fill this void in the literature by examining not only the factors of improved mental health associated with different Christmas tree shopping environments (outdoor biophilic designs offering real trees vs. indoor store designs offering artificial trees), but it also identified the specific natural elements of the shopping environment (in addition to other tree-related attributes such retail locations, prices, species, and height) that contribute to positive consumer responses. Christmas tree retailers will be able to use this information to improve tree display designs, improve marketing and merchandizing, and develop future research questions. The 5 Perceived Restorativeness Scales (fascination, being-away, compatibility, coherence, and scope) and overall restorative quality of the two types of Christmas tree shopping environments (outdoor biophilic designs vs. indoor store designs) were compared. The key finding indicates that real/outdoor trees have a higher perceived restorative quality (real-time video evaluation p<.05 and post-video evaluation p<.001), but more can be done to increase (and better measure) these effects in the future. Although the fascination ratings for artificial/indoor tree ratings were significantly higher (p<.01), it had a much weaker effect than real trees (less than half) on overall restorative quality. That is, although indoor artificial trees are more fascinating, it appears to be the kind of “hard” fascination that does not contribute as much to restoration when compared to the “softer” fascination associated with real trees. The hard fascination of artificial/indoor Christmas trees indoors (with all of the flashy lights) might be compared with other examples of hard fascination such as fast movement, loud noises, watching sports games on television, visiting amusement parks. On the other hand, “soft” fascination involves stimuli that does not require much effort (which reduces the internal noise and burden). Classic examples include wind blowing through leaves or ripples of water traveling across a pond. Real/outdoor Christmas trees provide another really good example. These findings not only add to the list of benefits that have been identified for purchasing real Christmas trees, but also supports Basu, Duvall, and Kaplan’s (2018) argument that soft fascination is key and an underexamined element of Attention Restoration Theory. The positive effect of coherence (e.g., orderly tree displays) and scope (e.g., perception of depth and spaciousness) on overall restorative quality that was perceived by respondents was greater for real/outdoor tree displays. This larger effect was documented in a multivariate multiple regression model but also in most of the peak restorative moments that were identified during the video evaluation. Based on these findings, the authors provide some propositions on how to further improve the perception of depth, spaciousness, and the impression of a receding landscape, especially for small spaces and tree displays. Finally, conjoint analysis was used to examine the utility value of 16 combinations of attributes including tree price, species, height, and product. The combination of “$60-80, pine, 6-8', real” is the most preferred/optimal by study respondents, closely followed by the combination of “$60- 80, fir, 6-8', real”, and the combination of “$80-100, fir, 8-10', real”. Price was the most important attribute. In terms of product, 100% of customers preferred real trees over artificial ones. Several marketing, design, and future research recommendations and propositions are made based on these and other study findings