Abstract
Urban living often limits routine contact with nature, while digital technologies have become deeply embedded in everyday life and cognition. Yet technological malfunctions, intrusions, and diminished user agency can elicit technostress, raising the question of whether exposure to natural environments can buffer its effects. This study examined whether exposure to a natural (green) environment, compared with a built urban (gray) environment, attenuates psychophysiological responses to technostress. Fifty-two healthy adults were assigned to either a green (garden-like) or gray (built urban) environment. Before and after two outdoor walking sessions in the assigned environment, participants completed a word-selection task manipulating technology-induced stress and sense of agency. High-resolution infrared thermal imaging was used as a contact-free method to monitor facial temperature dynamics, providing indirect indices of peripheral autonomic regulation during task performance, while heart rate variability (HRV) was monitored as an index of cardiac autonomic activity during task performance. High technostress reduced task accuracy and increased perceived stress. Under the condition combining high technostress and reduced agency, perceived stress decreased following green, but not gray, exposure. Facial thermal responses, particularly in the nose-tip and perioral regions, also differed between the green and gray groups under stressful task conditions, indicating that environmental exposure modulated peripheral physiological responses associated with technostress. No effects were observed for HRV. After gray, but not green, environmental exposure, an increase in self-report agency measures under high technostress was accompanied by an increase in perioral temperature, indicating a relationship between subjective experience and peripheral activation. These findings suggest that even brief exposures to natural green environments may reduce vulnerability to technostress by attenuating subjective stress and modulating peripheral physiological responses. The results contribute to the growing literature on restorative environments, human–technology interaction, and psychophysiological resilience.