Difference in Emotional Evaluation according to the Preference of Coleus Cultivars

Abstract

Background and objective: This study investigated the preferences and repurchase intentions (loyalty) of respondents to 8 coleus (Coleus scutellarioides) cultivars potentially useful for tropical style streetscapes.Methods: A survey was conducted on 148 general respondents, and the responses from 136 respondents were analyzed excluding 12 inappropriate copies.Results: Through demographic analysis on plant gardening experience, plant preference tendency, and plant-related event, we discovered that plant preference tendency was lowest in the 20s and highest in the 60s and above, indicating that plant preference tendency significantly increased with age. Out of 6 factors on perceived importance of plants, environmental and emotional relaxation for improved quality of life were high. As a result of examining the emotional responses felt by looking at the images of 8 coleus cultivars, there was a statistically significant difference among cultivars. Major emotional words were 'calm' and 'comfortable'. There was a positive correlation between loyalty to coleus, preference, Korean version of WHOQOL-BREF, plant gardening activity level, and the importance of plants, and a negative correlation with PSS-K (Korean Perceived Stress Scale). We conducted a multiple regression analysis including dummy variables to examine the effect of plant gardening activity level, PSS-K, and Korean version of WHOQOL-BREF on loyalty of survey respondents. The results showed that the effect was greatest in the order of plant-related event, physical health domain, age (50's), covers, environment domain, male, and age (30's).Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that coleus could mitigate the psychological stress and depression. As 'Lime Delight' with simple green color showed the highest preference among cultivars, we recommend a green cultivar from the psychological point of view rather than combination planting of multi-colored cultivars.