A Preferred Road to Mental Restoration in the Chinese Classical Garden

Jing Xie, Shixian Luo, Katsunori Furuya, Takahide Kagawa and Mian Yang
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Jing Xie: Graduate School of Horticulture, Chiba University, Chiba 271-8510, Japan
Shixian Luo: Graduate School of Horticulture, Chiba University, Chiba 271-8510, Japan
Katsunori Furuya: Graduate School of Horticulture, Chiba University, Chiba 271-8510, Japan
Takahide Kagawa: Department of Forest Management, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba 305-8687, Japan
Mian Yang: Art College, Sichuan Tourism University, Chengdu 610100, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-16

Abstract: The impact that classical gardens have on the well-being and quality of life of visitors, especially city dwellers, is an important topic. Scholars have previously focused on landscape aspects, such as water bodies, plants, rocks, chairs, pavilions, and public squares, in various green spaces but have overlooked the road settings that visitors walk on. This study used the Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum as the subject region and employed a convenience sampling method ( n = 730) to analyze the preference and mental restoration of different road settings of Chinese classical gardens. According to the findings, the majority of visitors felt that the road settings in these classical gardens provided psychological recovery, and half of the roads received a preference score of five or above. The regression results indicated that nature, culture, space, refuge, and serene were found to be important predictive dimensions for both mental restoration and preference. Furthermore, this study divides landscape elements in road settings into two major categories (natural and artificial elements) and eight subcategories (trees, shrubs, lawns, roads, fences, walls, decorations, and buildings) to investigate the relationship between various types of specific road setting elements and visitors’ perceived preferences as well as restorability. The correlation results showed that in terms of preference, tree > lawn > path > fence > shrub > wall; in terms of restoration, tree > lawn > shrub > fence > path > decoration > building > wall. Overall, the findings of this research can improve visitor preferences and restoration in a given environmental setting, resulting in a more enjoyable experience.

Keywords: landscape elements; mental restoration; perceived sensory dimensions; preference; road settings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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