Objective Waterscapes are essential elements of both natural and urban environments, contributing significantly to physical and mental well-being through their restorative effects. Although research in this field has advanced over the past two decades — driven by the evolution of urban landscapes and methodological innovations — it remains fragmented. A comprehensive framework integrating multiple research perspectives on the restorative effects of waterscapes has yet to be established. Furthermore, the relationships between research perspectives, methodologies, and specific restorative characteristics of waterscapes remain underexplored. These gaps have limited the development of a multidimensional understanding of the restorative effects of waterscapes.

Methods This research employs a literature review and bibliometric analysis to comprehensively assess domestic and international research published from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2024. A total of 331 English articles and 144 Chinese articles are collected. Upon review of titles and abstracts, 160 articles are selected for in-depth reading and citation analysis, with 78 articles being finally included for discussion. Based on this dataset, a VOSviewer-based keyword co-occurrence analysis is conducted to explore the connections among research perspectives, research objects, and restorative characteristics, with the results obtained informing the construction of a structured analytical framework for this review.

Results This research identifies four major research perspectives: physiology – cognition, emotional experience, behavioral response, and sense of place. The physiology – cognition perspective, grounded in stress reduction theory (SRT) and attention restoration theory (ART), often combines physiological indicators with psychometric scales. Physiological data enable dynamic tracking of stress and add a temporal dimension to analysis, while restorative scales help link waterscape characteristics to the four ART dimensions: being away, extent, fascination, and compatibility. The emotional experience perspective delves into the broad range of affective responses triggered by waterscapes, often focusing on themes like awe, nostalgia, and memory. The behavioral response and sense of place perspectives examine the functional and symbolic roles of waterscapes. Behavioral research links restorative outcomes with physical activity, social interaction, space utilization, and demographic differences, while sense of place research emphasizes spatial meaning and place attachment. Though these two perspectives may not directly reflect restorative outcomes, they are integral to understanding the restorative effects of waterscapes, yet remain underexplored. The research on the restorative effects of waterscapes focuses not only on understanding individuals’ restorative experiences, but also on identifying the specific characteristics of waterscapes that contribute to restoration. Based on core literature, this research explores how four research perspectives engage with different waterscape types and restorative characteristics. Regarding waterscape types, with the exception of the sense of place perspective, existing research primarily focuses on large-scale natural or semi-natural waterscapes, with limited attention to small-scale elements such as artificial cascades, waterfalls, streams, and fountains. At the level of specific restorative characteristics, physical characteristics have been widely studied, particularly in terms of scale and naturalness. Their measurability supports quantitative analysis of their association with restorative outcomes. Compared to scale and naturalness, multisensory and spatial characteristics receive less attention. Most research focuses on audiovisual stimuli, with limited exploration of tactile and olfactory dimensions. Moreover, links between audiovisual characteristics and restoration remain inconclusive. Spatial characteristics are typically assessed through metrics such as water body width, depth-to-height ratios, and perception-based evaluations, but both the range of indicators and their quantification methods remain limited. Factors like layering and landscape depth may also contribute to restorative perceptions but lack empirical study. The functional characteristics of waterscapes are closely tied to individual perception and contextual experience, thus exhibiting greater subjectivity. Landscape research tends to prioritize quantifiable recreational and social functions of waterscapes, while experiential dimensions such as interactivity and cultural meaning are often overlooked. Activities such as water play and swimming, and waterscapes' symbolic associations with history or identity, can elicit emotional resonance and foster restorative experiences. These effects vary across populations, and their mechanisms deserve further investigation through both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Conclusion In general, existing research is moving beyond a “static observation” paradigm by embracing a more holistic understanding of restorative place experience. Future research should emphasize the integrated perception of both intrinsic and extrinsic waterscape characteristics, the continuous experience of three-dimensional space, and multi-sensory interactions with water environments. Greater integration of the four research perspectives, along with the application of mixed research methods, is needed to establish a more comprehensive framework for exploring restorative waterscapes.