A Study on the Image and Visual Preference for the Beautiful Forest Scenery types in Korea

Abstract

This study intends to evaluate visual preference and image for 10 types of forest sceneries which have own distinct characteristics without overlapping each other among 22 types of beautiful forest sceneries based on Korea National Parks. Z scale and paired comparison methods were used to analyze visual preference for forest scenery, and SD scale method was also adopted to assess visual image for forest scenery. Experiments were conducted with 3 different university students groups. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, the evaluation results of Z scale (N=70) and paired comparison (N=64) methods show similar visual preference for different types of forest scenery. 'Scenery inside forests' and 'valley and rock' sceneries have the highest level of preference, and 'panorama of ridges', 'ridge of curious rock peaks', and 'waterfall and cliff' also have relatively higher preference level than others. However, 'community of dead trees' has the lowest preference in forest sceneries. Second, the factor analysis outputs of the image scores for beautiful forest scenery types by SD scale (N=66) show 3 factors of 'mysterious charm', 'colorful sense', and 'vividness/variety'. Examined the variables of forest scenery types for each factor, the image of 'mysterious charm' is based on the sceneries of mountain ridges, the image of 'colorful sense' is focused on the sceneries of color-expressed sense of the season, and the image of 'vividness/variety' is based on the sceneries of waterscape and curious rock peaks.