The Aesthetic Value of World Heritage Karst: A Literature Review and Implication for Huangguoshu Scenic Area Outstanding Universal Value

Abstract

With the development of aesthetic value research, more and more disciplines, institutions, and researchers have joined in, taking the research development in a quantitative direction. At present, karst is not only a popular type of “world natural heritage site”, but also a hotspot in the research of landscape aesthetics. However, no comprehensive literature review covers the aesthetic value of World Heritage karst sites. To fill this gap, the study systematically reviewed 190 articles retrieved from the Web of Science, the China Knowledge Resource Integrated, and Google Scholar databases. First, the study conducted a quantitative analysis of the annual number, content, countries, and themes of published literature. Secondly, the study summarized the landscape evaluation, aesthetic value, and protection of World Heritage karst sites and related theories and put forward the key scientific issues to be solved, as well as the direction of future research.