The Importance of Indoor Foliage Plants and Human Emotions to Indoor Foliage Plants

Abstract

This study was conducted to find out the sensibility reaction and importance with the visual element of indoor foliage plants in the survey of 216 participants. The eight kinds of leaf display plants were purchased and presented on white pot. The eight kinds of plant were included in ‘50 varieties of indoor foliage plants’ announced by NASA and also easy to manage. The correlation between sensibility reaction, importance, loyalty to foliage plants and the expectation of therapeutic effect was investigated and analyzed by preference and Semantic Differential Scaling. Among importance factors of indoor foliage plant, the environmental, esthetic and emotional relaxation were high and the environmental and emotional relaxation were treated as important factors to age 40s or over especially. The result on the correlation between the expectation of therapeutic effect and, importance and loyalty of indoor foliage plant showed that the ‘emotional relaxation’ and ‘increasing natural healing power of body’ were correlated highest. In addition, significant correlation was shown statistically in five questions of expectation of therapeutic effect and loyalty. Especially, high correlation was shown in expectation of psychological stability effect of indoor foliage plant and working in an office where the indoor landscaping is created well. Significant differences were shown statistically with the emotional reactions between eight plants and “Comfortable”, “Pleasant”, “Calm”, “Bright”, and “Sharp” were representative emotional reactions to plants. Anthurium andraeanum cv. was the most preferred out of eight plants and Spathiphyllum spp.> Ficus benjamina > Dypsis lutescens > Dracaena marginata > Rhapis excelsa > Hedera helix > Aglaonema commutatum was the order after. The most preferred leaf color of foliage plants was green. Recently, the environmental factors such as micro dust, stress and depression has been magnified and the stress relief, emotional relaxation and psychological stability effects of indoor foliage plants support the usefulness of them.