Benefits of Using Plants in Indoor Environments: Exploring Common Research Gaps

The introduction of green plants in indoor spaces has raised a great amount of interest motivated by plants’ supposed capacity to improve the quality of indoor built environments. Subsequent studies have covered a broad range of topics, testing plants in indoor environments for their climate-mitigating effects, acoustic benefits, potential energy savings and the enhancement of the indoor microbial communities. Despite the diversity of focus in these studies, no major breakthroughs have been made involving the use of plants in indoor environments after nearly thirty years of research. To identify major inconsistencies and gaps in the research, this review, of an explorative nature, presents an analysis of plant-related parameters reported in 31 cases of experimental research involving the use of plants in indoor environments. The papers were identified by searching the online databases Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Scopus and MDPI and were selected based on their relevance to the topic and diversity of focus. Two classifications in table form provide an overview of the 38 plant-related parameters used in the reviewed research. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the tables highlight a strongly anthropocentric frame of reference across the majority of the studies, which prioritize human and experimental convenience above plant physiology, and display an overall scarcity and inconsistency in the plant-related parameters reported.