Assessing scenic beauty of culture-based landscapes in North Toraja Regency

Abstract

Toraja is a popular tourist destination in the sacred highlands of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. It has been widely known for its unique traditional culture. The combination of nature, agriculture, and culture is landscape beauty as area potential tourism. However, the management of tourism objects and attractions has not given much attention to the quality of the landscape aesthetic. This paper shows the results of scenic beauty assessment of culture-based landscape in the North Toraja Regency. Field survey and analysis using Scenic Beauty Estimation (SBE) were used as the method of this research. The results showed that the SBE score represented by 40 landscape pictures ranged from -42 to 234. The landscape that achieved the highest SBE score of 234 was Lolai To’tombi, while the landscape with the lowest SBE score of -42 was Limbong Agrotourism. The preferred landscape has a unique characteristic, in order, having a harmonious blend of hardscape elements and vegetation, and the presence of green open space or blue sky in the landscape. Managers of tourism objects need to consider the character of the landscape in developing tourism objects and attractions to improve the quality of landscape beauty.