Studies on Experience and Cognition Process of Natural Environment
| Autor: | Mei-Fen Lee, 李美芬 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2006 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 94 With the trend of sustainable management and the increasing consciousness of ecological protection, ‘maintaining ecological diversity’ and ‘conserving environment’ have become basic guiding principles in environmental management. However, it induces issues about the conflict between visual quality and ecological quality and causes the arguments of perceptual factors, experience process, and experience benefit between the school of landscape aesthetics and the school of ecological experience. This study tries to clarify the conflicts and arguments by employing three different approaches, phenomenological research, experimental research, and positivistic research, to discuss experience and cognition process of natural environment. It is expected that the results could clarify the experience and cognition process, including how an individual subject experience the natural environment, how to filter the environmental stimuli, and how to process the information generated from the natural environment. For achieving this expectation, this study adopts a three-step approach to obtain the required data. The first step is related to the study of “Exploring the phenomenon of experience process in natural environment”. This step is qualitative oriented approach and focuses on finding the common structure of environment experience phenomenon when individuals proceed with their environment experience in a natural environment. The result of this step will play an important role in having a dialogue with other landscape evaluation paradigms and acting as the argumentation basis for implementing the further studies. In the part of individual subject, the results show that there are three major concepts influencing individual’s experience, including ‘the psychological thinking condition before experiencing’, ‘individual’s related experiences’, and ‘individual’s socio-demographic background’. In the part of environment, the results indicate that there are also three major concepts influencing individual’s experience, including ‘concerned environmental elements or events’, ‘concerned environmental combination status’, and ‘concerned ecology and meaning of an environment’. In the part of the interaction between individual subject and environment, the results show that there are two major concepts influencing individual’s experience, including ‘direct influence factors related to individual subject and environment’ and ‘indirect influence factors related to others’. Through the whole experience of natural environment and cognition process, five major outcomes and benefits are generated, such as ‘obtaining knowledge and experience’, ‘influencing attitude and behavior’, ‘generating psychological benefit’, ‘generating health benefit’, and ‘generating environment appraisal’. Furthermore, the study finds out that individual subjects concern different focused elements in two experiencing processes, experience cognition process of natural environment and traditional experience perception process. The second step is related to the study of “An experiment of evaluative cognition structure”. A sorting method is used in this step that respondents are asked to do sorting and ranking tasks in order to reveal the major cognitive factors while evaluating the related factors shown in different tested photos. The results show that respondents with different learning background will tend to use their own familiar cognitive model to deconstruct the environment while experiencing and evaluating the natural environment. Facing with the environment which is easily understood, respondents use the explicit and valid cognitive structure to experience the environment. In addition, respondents with specific learning background will have different sensitivity on environmental factors. Furthermore, the study uses content analysis to analyze the descriptive information replied by respondents while comparing scenic beauty and evaluating landscape preference. The results reveal that in proceeding general preference evaluation more respondents respond that their evaluation scores could be influenced by affordable functions provided by the environment. The results also show that the cognitive factors used in evaluating scenic beauty and landscape preference are different. The third step is related to the study of “Exploring the cognitive factors in information process and their influences”. This step is quantitative oriented approach and focuses on the discussions of how individuals with different characteristics deal with information provided by the environment. The study also compares respondents’ reactions to the experience evaluation of woodland environment in order to realize the relationships of important factors in information process while experiencing and evaluation an environment. The results indicate that respondents will perceive and generate different cognitive factors when they are in different types of environment. While evaluating, the environmental factors respondents feeling more sensitive and factors used to do evaluation are different. Respondents with different characteristics will also influence their experience, cognition, and evaluation situation. When discussing the correlation between evaluation scores, the study finds out that the correlations between scenic beauty and naturalness of different environments are significant different. It is also true for the correlation between scenic beauty and preference. The results of this step also testify the results generated from the second step. Overall, this study integrates qualitative results with quantitative results and provides a multidimensional research design model to inspect research issues. The results clarify the argumentation basis for both ecological aesthetics and landscape aesthetics experience. In addition, the study infuses different perspectives into the related theories through comparing differences of cognitive factors used in evaluation process in different environments and the relationships between them. Moreover, the discussion about the relationship between ‘the demand of environmental ecological quality’ and ‘the demand of human aesthetics’ could serve as a basis for a multidimensional evaluation about ‘landscape health’ and the development of management model. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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