Management Effectiveness of a Secondary Coniferous Forest for Landscape Appreciation and Psychological Restoration

Norimasa Takayama, Akio Fujiwara, Haruo Saito and Masahiro Horiuchi
Additional contact information
Norimasa Takayama: Division of Forest Management, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in JAPAN, 1 Matsuno-sato, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8687, Japan
Akio Fujiwara: Fuji Iyashinomoroi Woodland Study Center, the University of Tokyo, 341-2 Yamanaka, Yamanakako Village, Minami-tsuru, Yamanashi 401-0501, Japan
Haruo Saito: Fuji Iyashinomoroi Woodland Study Center, the University of Tokyo, 341-2 Yamanaka, Yamanakako Village, Minami-tsuru, Yamanashi 401-0501, Japan
Masahiro Horiuchi: Division of Human Environmental Science, Mt. Fuji Research Institute, 5597-1 Kami-yoshida, Fuji-yoshida, Yamanashi 403-0005, Japan

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-22

Abstract: We investigated the influence of forest management on landscape appreciation and psychological restoration in on-site settings by exposing respondents to an unmanaged, dense coniferous (crowding) forest and a managed (thinned) coniferous forest; we set the two experimental settings in the forests of the Fuji Iyashinomoroi Woodland Study Center. The respondents were individually exposed to both settings while sitting for 15 min and were required to answer three questionnaires to analyze the psychological restorative effects before and after the experiment (feeling (the Profile of Mood States), affect (the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), and subjective restorativeness (the Restorative Outcome Scale). To compare landscape appreciation, they were required to answer another two questionnaires only after the experiment, for scene appreciation (the semantic differential scale) and for the restorative properties of each environment (the Perceived Restorativeness Scale). Finally, we obtained these findings: (1) the respondents evaluated each forest environment highly differently and evaluated the thinned forest setting more positively; (2) the respondents’ impressions of the two physical environments did not appear to be accurately reflected in their evaluations; (3) forest environments have potential restorative effects whether or not they are managed, but these effects can be partially enhanced by managing the forests.

Keywords: Shinrin-yoku; forest management; profile of mood states; restorative outcome scale; positive and negative affect schedule; semantic differential method; perceived restorativeness scale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/7/800/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/7/800/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:7:p:800-:d:105071

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().