Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2015

Presentation information

International Session (Oral)

Symbol H (Human Geosciences) » H-GG Geography

[H-GG01] International comparison of landscape appreciation

Thu. May 28, 2015 2:15 PM - 4:00 PM 101B (1F)

Convener:*Christoph Rupprecht(Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University), Yui Takase(Graduate school of Horticulture, Chiba University), Katsunori Furuya(Graduate School of Horticulture, Chiba University), Chair:Christoph Rupprecht(Griffith School of Environment, Griffith University)

3:45 PM - 4:00 PM

[HGG01-16] Rescent trend of psychological evaluation of landscape from view point of survey paper

*Yoji AOKI1, Christoph Rupprecht2, Norimasa TAKAYAMA3 (1.Open University of Japan, 2.Griffith University, 3.Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Japan)

Keywords:survey papers, landscape evaluation research, recent trend

A trend of psychological evaluation of landscape from view point of survey paper
Aoki, Yoji., Christoph, Rupprecht and Takayama, Norimasa
The beginning of landscape evaluation using psychometrical method was 1967, and those studies were popularized during 1970-1990's, but recently such research has tended to decrease. Figure 1 showed that the number of survey papers was also similar tendency. Various technical developments of the measurements and analysis was tried and the first predictive model to explain the preference of landscapes was proposed by Shafer (1969). On the other hand, such approach was criticized by Carlson (1977), but this criticism never gave a proposal to solve these problems. The background of this deterioration was formed by the deadlock faced in the study of landscape evaluation study through the world.
At the beginning of this research subject, Japan and the United States were leading technical developments of this research realm in the 1970s. Japanese researchers were interested in the application of the results of experiments based on the assumption of universality and everlasting truth of their results. This assumption was formed by the simple racial and cultural background of Japan, which has a uniform national wide good primary education system with the high rate of entrance into universities and well diffused mass media of television. Due to their belief, planners applied their numerical results in their planning purposes.
On the other hand, researchers of the United States were interested in the effects of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, because of the broad diversity in human resources, e.g. racial and cultural backgrounds, formed by the huge number of immigrants in the US. As a result, they hesitated to use their results directly in physical planning. The variety of stakeholders in their society, required consensus in the community and they needed more consideration to use their data in their planning. And they accumulated many studies in their scientific journals.
According to landscape evaluation research that spread from Japan and the United States to Europe and the world, the different results were obtained due to ethnic and cultural backgrounds similar to the United States. Researchers have run into the problem of what the results they obtained meant, i.e. what the landscape evaluation was. We now knew that the phenomenon of landscape evaluation is part of the mental aspects of humans realized by their experience at the site and at the time, and the human understanding of the landscape appreciation has evolved through their historical age (Bourassa 1991, Aoki and Kitamura 2001).
This problem brought us new research to think about, namely universality and immutability in the era transition as well as landscape evaluation in the regions. Planners, who shaped the landscape by physical planning, began to anxious about their results and know how landscape evaluation results obtained at that time could be proven to be true and keep their usefulness in planning. Here, landscape evaluation study faced a big wall.
However, landscape evaluation in recent years, actively researched in developing countries, and the number of papers has increased again since 2011. The research from these developing countries might break through the wall currently faced by landscape evaluation. Based on the discussion in JpGU2013 and JpGU2014, I hope that the outcome of this year's workshop supports these efforts.