The kinetic mechanism of structure healing after unloading from large elongation for styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) block copolymer materials was investigated by following their residual deformation recovery behaviors upon annealing. A linear relationship was found to exist between the deformation recovery percentage and the logarithm of time at different temperatures, which shed light on the mechanism of structure healing. A modified activation energy model was proposed to describe the kinetics of the process. It was also found that the model agrees well with other SBS structure healing-related experimental data such as the recovery of hardness as well as dynamic mechanical property after large elongation. (C) 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.