Visitors' Judgements on the Scenery of Ritsurin Garden

Abstract

Summary: This survey was conducted among the visitors of Ritsurin Garden by using a questionnaire structured in accordance with the Semantic Differential method. The evaluation on the garden scenery as a whole resulted in a large number of judgements in the categories of very beautiful, very good, very pleasant, very harmonious and very tranquil, which indicates that the garden was considered to be of great value. The judgements on the conspicuousness of external buildings highly correlated with the extent of visual detraction. This led to the preference for visual conservation action. Most of visitors (68.8 %) supported conservation actions in varying degrees to conserve the visual quality of Ritsurin Garden. There was a tendency that, the older the age of the visitors and the greater the number of visits, the higher the number of favorable judgements for the evaluation of the garden scenery and the stronger the preference for conservation action.