Exploring the Effects of Individual Connection to Nature on Perceptual Evaluation of Natural Landscape

• Main Authors: I-Chun Tang, 唐宜君
• Other Authors: 張俊彥
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/74359127554906541365

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 園藝暨景觀學系 === 102 === Exposure to natural environments can promote health and wellbeing. Individuals can restore their attentional capacities, reduce stress, develop healthy habits and have better social interaction in nature. Although contact with nature has been shown to promote health and wellbeing across the life-span, many people do not seem to perceive sufficient restorative and preference-related qualities while in contact with nature. The uninspiring perceptual experiences that they have had in nature may diminish their preference for, and willingness to, visit natural areas. In order to identify potential antecedents of positive perceptual experiences in natural settings, we investigated the influential role of a personal connection with nature on perceptions of preference-related environmental information in varying natural settings. The concept of connection to nature describes a deep appreciation of, and affiliation with, natural environments; and individuals with higher levels of connection to nature are suspected to view natural landscapes as more attractive and fascinating. A sense of connection to nature should encourage individuals to resonate with the environment spontaneously and to find fascinating information in the encountered natural landscapes. We suggest that an individual’s connection to nature may help individuals to retain a sense of safety, to take an active role in seeking positive environmental information, and consequently, to perceive more restorative and preference-related qualities of natural settings. In the current study, we investigated the research question by two steps. In the first part of the study, the participants (n = 77) rated three different types of natural forest landscapes in terms of perceived environmental information, including sense of safety, coherence, complexity, legibility, mystery, attentional restorativeness, familiarity and preference. Participants also reported their background and connection with nature through the use of the natural relatedness scale (NR). The results showed that deeper personal connections to nature are associated with greater perceptual evaluations of sense of safety, legibility, mystery, and attentional restorativeness after accounting for landscape type and familiarity. A personal connection to nature is likely to enhance a person’s perceptual experiences of natural landscapes. In the second part of the study, we investigated the relationship between the participant’s personal connection to nature and their perceptual evaluations of landscapes by images with different levels of perceived naturalness. The four sets of images are photos of urban area, urban woods, rural woods and natural woods. Each participant (n = 268) rated one set of images in terms of perceived environmental information and provided their connection with nature by NR scale. The results showed that deeper personal connections to nature are associated with greater perceptual evaluations of urban woods, rural woods and natural woods. In contrast, this relationship does not exist in the urban area. It is concluded that a personal connection to nature is likely to enhance a person’s perceptual experiences in green areas, no matter how natural the green area is. The study make the link between two different literatures in environmental psychology: a sense of personal relationship with nature, and landscape perceptions. This topic has not yet been addressed in the empirical literature, and the result extend the application of personal connectedness to nature from ecological behavior to perceptual experience of natural landscape.