Abstract
Birds are both a landscape element and a common form of wildlife found in urban parks. Human’s perceptions of their surrounding landscapes need to be understood in order to create better environments. This study aimed to determine and evaluate the aesthetic quality of landscapes regarding birds as landscape elements, and to compare the results between Indonesian and Japanese people. The data were analyzed using scenic beauty estimation, the Mann-Whitney U Test, and the Spearman Correlation. A total of 252 respondents evaluated landscape images and answered a questionnaire. The results showed that landscape images with birds were given lower scenic beauty scores from Japanese respondents than they were from Indonesian respondents. There were significant differences between Indonesian and Japanese respondents in four landscape images with birds and two landscape images with human-bird interactions. Besides this, there were different strengths in correlations between landscape images with and without birds and landscape images with and without human-bird interactions among Indonesian and Japanese respondents. In conclusion, the existence of birds as landscape elements in urban parks had an influence on the perceptions and preferences of Indonesian and Japanese respondents. However, there was a difference in how they appreciated birds as landscape elements. Keywords: cross-cultural, landscape images, preference, scenic beauty estimation, urban wildlife
Highlights
Public awareness about comfortable, habitable, and sustainable environments has become an important aspect in urban development
The results revealed that 6.13% of Indonesian respondents and 3.24% of Japanese respondents visited a park for the purpose of bird watching
Among the Japanese respondents, about 65.81% agreed that birds are interesting, 64.10% enjoyed having interactions with birds in parks, and 65.81% did not feel disturbed by their presence in parks. These percentages were much lower than those of Indonesian respondents. These results indicated that the Indonesian respondents expressed more interest in birds as landscape elements in parks than those of Japanese respondents
Summary
Habitable, and sustainable environments has become an important aspect in urban development. Developing sustainable cities is about improving the abiotic and biotic aspects of urban life, and improving social aspects of life such as citizens’ satisfaction with, experiences of, and perceptions of their environmental quality. In various definitions of sustainable cities, quality of life issues are important in addition to environmental criteria. Features such as the “number of public green spaces” and “public parks” are often mentioned as important factors that make cities livable, pleasant, and attractive [1]. Recent studies have stated that there are many variables that may affect human perception and preference such as individual understandings of visual quality, cultures, hobbies, knowledge backgrounds, experiences, living environments, social roles, classes, and economic incomes [14]. Other studies have found that factors that influenced human perception consisted of gender, age, the types of landscapes in which people lived in the past, the types of landscapes in which people live in the present, the present urbanization level, and experiences during the journeys to the landscapes [15]
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