Although forests can help people relax and recover from stress, direct access to natural environments may be constrained by practical and contextual factors. Virtual reality (VR) technology provides opportunities to deliver controlled and immersive experiences of natural environments. However, existing research has often relied on broad comparisons between natural and urban environments and has less frequently compared multiple landscape categories within an ecologically informed conceptual framework or examined the mediating mechanisms underlying responses to VR landscapes. To address these gaps, this study draws on edge effect theory as a conceptual framework to organize and compare six VR landscape categories: urban built, urban park, urban forest park, montane meadow, forest edge, and forest interior environments. Through a randomized between-group experiment with 210 university students, we compared immediate physiological (heart rate variability, skin conductance, and electroencephalogram) and psychological (mood and state anxiety) stress recovery responses across the six VR landscape conditions. We also examined key perceptual and psychological variables and their mediating relationships, including nature connectedness, perceived restorativeness, and soundscape perception. The findings revealed differences in psychological restorative responses across the six landscape categories, whereas physiological stress recovery responses showed relatively limited differences among conditions. Landscapes containing greater natural elements showed stronger psychological restorative responses than the urban built environment. Furthermore, nature connectedness did not directly predict reduced state anxiety but was indirectly associated with emotional recovery through multiple mediating pathways involving soundscape pleasantness and perceived restorativeness. These findings provide insight into how different VR landscape categories and associated perceptual processes relate to short-term restorative responses and may inform the design of VR-based restorative environments. Future research incorporating neutral control conditions, quantitative assessments of landscape attributes, and comparisons between real-world and controlled environments could further elucidate landscape-specific effects and evaluate the generalizability of these findings.
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